The liberal media had a meltdown over Paramount putting an ombudsman, or “watchdog,” in place after President Trump’s $16 million settlement in his lawsuit over CBS’s 60 Minutes Kamala Harris interview edit. MSNBC showcased its bias on Tuesday’s Morning Joe when journalists rallied together over the outrage of CBS agreeing to monitor its bias and claimed that decision was “un-American.”
The journalists who covered the segment were quick to brush off the idea that the 60 Minutes edit was not a big deal when the interview was released a month before the 2024 Presidential Election. Co-host Willie Geist tried to paint the picture that the edit was for “time”:
Yeah, yeah, edit for time. Happens every day in the news business at magazines, and newspapers, and on television networks. You can’t show the whole thing. We have the ability to post the whole thing somewhere else so you can see the full context. We can give you the transcript, but for time, yes, interviews are edited.
Here’s the reality check: the original video contained a word salad by the former vice president. After Bill Whitaker pushed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to not be listening to former President Biden, Harris’s words were, “Well Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of, many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.”
60 Minutes aired the version where Harris came across “collected” and stated, “We are not gonna stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”
Remember Kamala’s word salad answer about Israel on 60 Minutes? It’s gone.
— MAZE (@mazemoore) October 8, 2024
This is what many Americans will now see. pic.twitter.com/H4w7btDv6x
Yes, Willie, the interview was edited...to fit 60 Minutes' liberal agenda. It’s one thing to shorten an interview for time, but it is a completely dangerous game for the media to edit the answers to align with their bias. Yale Executive Leadership Institute founder Jeffrey Sonnenfeld whined:
It’s a pathetic desperation to try to salvage the rapidly imploding Viacom-Paramount-CBS empire that once was...There’s nothing untoward, taken out, just shortened. And you can see what was done there. And to pay $16 million for that is ludicrous. And what damages the guy who won, you know, how is he in any way damaged?
Trump filed the lawsuit against CBS in October of 2024, before the election. 60 Minutes made an edit that could alter people’s perspectives on a candidate, even though that was not the accurate answer.
Co-host Joe Scarborough made jabs at the idea of a government “watchdog” being placed in a biased media outlet:
But I go back to my question, what would Mike Wallace say? What would Walter Cronkite say about part of the deal, being that a quote, “Watchdog” would be there to report on bias? I mean, this is, we have watchdogs everywhere. Watchdogs at universities. Watchdogs at news networks, seems un-American and obviously un-American to have government watchdogs looking over all of our institutions.
Do you know what looks “un-American” and how Trump was “damaged,” Joe and Jeffrey? Having a former president have his social media handles restricted by Big Tech in 2021. If watchdogs are “everywhere,” why are they not allowed in the media when it comes to displaying bias or partisanship? NPR has an ombudsman and it is still very much on the left, but MSNBC is horrified that there is even a possibility CBS’s biased coverage may get reined in. Let this serve as an example of the liberal media washing their hands of their biased actions.
Click here for the transcripts.
MSNBC’s Morning Joe
6:43 a.m. Eastern
7/29/25
JOE SCARBOROUGH: There are new questions this morning surrounding the potential consequences of Skydance Media’s acquisition of Paramount, the parent company of CBS. The FCC approval for the $8 billion sale last week was followed by Paramount’s $16 million settlement over a lawsuit brought by President Trump. The settlement over an edit that 60 Minutes made. The type of edit that 60 Minutes has been making for well over half a century.
Stipulations of the deal include the hiring of a watchdog tasked with fielding complaints about alleged political or ideological bias within the organization's news coverage. And Willie, let me just say, quite a leap for the network of Murrow or of Cronkite or of Mike Wallace. I would like to know where Mike Wallace would tell Skydance or anybody where they could stick that watchdog. It would not be pretty.And by the way, let’s underline the fact how outrageous that settlement with Donald Trump was over a pedestrian edit.
WILLIE GEIST: Yeah, yeah, edit for time. Happens every day in the news business at magazines, and newspapers, and on television networks. You can’t show the whole thing. We have the ability to post the whole thing somewhere else so you can see the full context. We can give you the transcript, but for time, yes, interviews are edited. So, that first settlement of $16 million to a lot of people was the first canary in the coal mine where they said, “Whoa, this network and corporation is willing to effectively pay off the Trump administration to get this deal done.”
Let’s bring in the founder of Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. He’s writing about all this and a new piece for The New Republic, titled “The ‘Tiffany Network’ Shatters as Paramount-CBS Sells Its Cheap Soul.” - “Sells its Soul Cheap.” Also with us for the conversation, MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle. Good Morning to you both.
Jeffrey, Let’s just, let’s take the media side of this first about everything that happened to get this deal done. I mean you can watch the dominoes fall from the settlement, the $16 million for 60 minutes, Colbert, in the surprise move is canned. They say it's strictly a financial decision, but there was no attempt to streamline the show or improve its finances before he was axed, effective next year. How did this all come to be? It was all about the deal, the Skydance deal?
JEFFERY SONNENFELD: It’s a pathetic desperation to try to salvage the rapidly imploding Viacom-Paramount-CBS empire that once was. When Shari Redstone, and I supported Shari Redstone's move to try to push her senescent dad out in his 90s, losing control of CBS and the Paramount-Viacom implosion. But it was worth $80 billion, now eight? I mean, she's lost more than 80 percent of the value, almost 90 percent of the value under her leadership. But yeah, you and Joe just nailed it. It’s outrageous. Those edits like you suggested, you put your transcripts out. We’ve all seen these, anybody who wants to can see the transcripts.
There’s nothing untoward, taken out, just shortened. And you can see what was done there. And to pay $16 million for that is ludicrous. And what damages the guy who won, you know, how is he in any way damaged? And Colbert you know, is, you know, I think, we would say on this network, Jimmy Fallon, you can't beat that. But Colbert is doing awfully well on late night. You know, he's the king of late night. If somebody said that the expenses were high, he’s paid the same thing as Fallon and Kimmel get paid. And Kimmel has 300 people on staff instead of two. So they want to cut it? They could come up with a proposal, but, you know, ten months away from the end of the contract, you don’t just cancel it like this. Something weird happening there politically.
SCARBOROUGH: Yeah, Mike, this is Mike Barnicle, this is about the deal. They wanted to get the deal done and so they did whatever needed to be done. But I go back to my question, what would Mike Wallace say? What would Walter Cronkite say about part of the deal, being that a quote, “Watchdog” would be there to report on bias? I mean, this is, we have watchdogs everywhere. Watchdogs at universities. Watchdogs at news networks, seems un-American and obviously un-American to have government watchdogs looking over all of our institutions.
(...)
MIKE BARNICLE: You knew you were getting an accurate portrait of what happened in the world and in the cities yesterday of the United States. And, Jeffrey, the news department, the gutting of the news department, the idea of an ombudsman, the idea of CBS paying $16 million for a simple 30 second edit, that it happens multiple times a day at every network. What happens to the soul of a network when you strip it the way they’re stripping it down, apparently in the news department.
(...)
6:50 a.m. Eastern
SONNENFELD: It's awful, Murrow had once said, you know this Edward R. Murrow, who is the great legend of CBS News in pointing out that a private media is a public American treasure, but it shouldn't be a state propaganda organ. And in fact, he said that to be persuasive, you have to be believable. And to be believable, you have to be credible. To be credible, you have to tell the truth. And a nation of a nation of sheep will wind up being led by a government of wolves. We can't let this go. And it's outrageous. And Willie, we were talking off camera, if you don't mind me saying, just asking what the FCC is up to here and what Commissioner, Chairman Carr is doing by trying to call these shots and the notion of having thought police to judge what's acceptable is really outrageous.
