CBS Executives Embrace 'Selective' Transparency

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Late Friday, CBS News and its flagship Sunday Current Affairs broadcast, Face The Nation, did an abrupt ‘about-face’ and embraced selective transparency.

After new charges of bias and a heavy-handed edit of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s interview, CBS leadership confirmed via the NYTimes that it was changing its editing practices. 

In the future, the Sunday broadcast will only air live interviews or pre-taped interviews with no edits. Full interviews will be broadcast and full transcripts released online.   

However, CBS executives who now apparently embrace transparency have given the October 2023 60 Minutes interview with President Biden a pass.  That same month, Special Counsel Robert Hur interviewed Mr. Biden over his mishandling of classified information.

Hur would later conclude it was impossible to prosecute Mr. Biden because a jury would see him as an  “elderly man with a poor memory.”   

Post merger, it feels like the CBS executives want the 2023 Biden interview in the rearview mirror as quickly as possible.  My journalistic training is that it is never too late for transparency.  But at the network Walter Cronkite made famous, transparency is apparently optional.

DEEP DIVE

The sweeping changes to CBS News’ editing practices did not happen in a vacuum.

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A similar incident unfolded last year between Face The Nation’s anchor Margaret Brennan and GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson.  Johnson recorded the entire interview and then released it publicly to reinforce his view that CBS was guilty of biased editing. 

The latest editing controversy began last week when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem appeared on CBS’ Face The Nation.  After the broadcast, Homeland Security released a scathing critique of the edited interview.

The facts are not in dispute. 

CBS cut Noem’s discussion of Kilmar Abrego Garcia who she characterized as a “ criminal illegal alien” and “a known human smuggler.” Initially, CBS defended the edited interview, but later corporate executives got involved. 

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