The calls have only grown louder for 60 Minutes to release the raw transcript of its interview with Kamala Harris after the program got caught editing out a large portion of her word salad answer to a question about Israel and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But that is not the only editing controversy CBS News is facing. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) is now accusing the Tiffany Network of deceptively trimming down his responses on Face the Nation on Sunday.
On Tuesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Josh Hammer, host of America on Trial, and Delano Squires, research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, to discuss the latest black eye for the network and what it says about the state of the media.
The ‘Selective’ Edits
Johnson was a guest on Face the Nation on Sunday where he appeared via a pre-taped interview with Margaret Brennan. On Monday, he accused the embattled network of “selectively editing” his answers in a series of posts on X.
“CBS has been under fire for selectively editing their interviews to PROMOTE Democrats and UNDERMINE Republicans,” he wrote. “Yesterday, they chose to cut FIVE important minutes out of my nearly 15 minute interview. You can be the judge as to why.”
He proceeded to share a trio of “receipts” that shows what CBS News aired compared to what he actually said. In one instance, the network cut his criticism of the Biden-Harris administration from his answer to a question about hurricane relief.
“I recently traveled to NC and victims of Hurricane Helene told me nearly two weeks after landfall, the Biden-Harris Administration had STILL not provided them with all the resources they desperately needed,” Johnson posted. “But CBS selectively edited OUT ENTIRELY this first-hand perspective.”
Johnson alleged that CBS always trimmed his comments about the steps Gov. Glenn Youngkin is taking in Virginia to ensure the only people who vote in the 2024 election are those who are legally allowed to do so.
“Apparently, CBS also doesn’t want you to hear about Virginia Gov. Youngkin, who is trying to clean the state’s voter rolls so non-American citizens can’t vote there,” he said in a follow-up tweet. “We need more states doing this, but the Biden-Harris Administration is SUING VIRGINIA and trying to STOP it.”
On the same topic, the speaker of the House said Face the Nation did not air a portion of his remarks that highlighted the SAVE Act and what Congress has tried to do to safeguard the voting process.
“The Biden-Harris Admin let millions of illegal aliens in our country. So, the House passed the SAVE Act to ensure only American citizens vote in American elections,” Johnson posted. “CBS edited that out and focused on 2020 instead of immediate threats to election integrity.”
‘Narrative Checking’
While Megyn noted that it is not unusual for a pre-taped interview to be edited, she said there is a line that cannot be crossed. “It is not to say you are not allowed to make any edits whatsoever when you are putting on a program. You are,” she noted. “But a substantive edit like this will get you in trouble every time.”
At this point, Squires said the corporate media is no longer in the business of “fact checking” but rather “narrative checking” and the public sees through that. “They choose the language that they use to frame particular stories,” he noted. “And then they do things like this where they will just cut out substantive portions of a person’s response in order to make it appear that they are saying something that they don’t say.”
As Hammer explained, this is but the latest black eye for CBS News after the 60 Minutes edit, the fact-check fail of J.D. Vance during the vice presidential debate, and the fallout from Tony Dokoupil’s interview with Ta’Nehisi Coates. And it explains why trust in media continues to erode.
“I think the media has the lowest approval rating of maybe any institution in America right now, outside of the Congress… but will they ever look in the mirror,” Hammer asked. “The answer is probably not… I don’t think that they have the self-awareness to look in the mirror and actually stop these practices.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Hammer and Squires by tuning in to episode 917 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.