On Oct. 20, the “60 Minutes” squad put out a statement dismissing Donald Trump’s accusations of manipulative editing in their Kamala Harris interview as “false.” But they offered no evidence in support of their claims.
Everyone can see the divergence between the Harris word salad that appeared in a promo on “Face the Nation” and the shorter, more coherent answer on their election special. But they refuse to release a transcript to explain themselves. It’s always maddening when the arrogant journalists who claim they hold government accountable refuse to be accountable.
Nobody in TV news has been more overpraised than “60 Minutes.” This horde of urbane leftist snobs has concocted syrupy minutes for Democrats (especially Barack Obama) and salty minutes for Republicans (especially Trump).
Four years ago at this time, Lesley Stahl’s interview with Trump was so hostile, the transcript is a long list of interrupted answers. Right from the beginning, Stahl asked, “Are you ready for some tough questions?” She asked that four times.
Trump couldn’t even finish sentences. Stahl lectured him that the Hunter Biden laptop was unverified. “You know, this is ’60 Minutes.’ And we can’t put on things we can’t verify.” That needed a laugh track. (See Dan Rather’s 2004 phony-documents debacle on “60 Minutes II.”)
Trump accurately shot back: “No, you won’t put it on because it’s bad for Biden.”
Stahl argued that the Bidens taking money from Russia, China and Ukraine wasn’t a serious issue, and instead revisited 2016 issues like “Lock Her Up” chants against Hillary Clinton — and in 2020, against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.)
But it’s easy to forget Norah O’Donnell’s interview with Joe Biden four years ago, where she lamented Biden was “forced to address new and unverified claims that he was involved in his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings.” As we know, CBS claimed they couldn’t be verified.
O’Donnell tossed this Wiffle ball: “Do you believe the recent leak of material allegedly from Hunter’s computer is part of a Russian disinformation campaign?”
Biden gave an unchallenged answer about how the intelligence community said, “Giuliani was being fed disinformation from the Russians,” “Putin’s trying very hard to spread disinformation about Joe Biden” and “it’s a smear campaign.”
There was no interruption and no follow-up. They went to commercial.
This pattern is not new, and moderate Republicans were also knifed. Mike Wallace’s interview with Mitt Romney in 2007 was sharply personal, demanding to know if the Republican candidate had premarital sex with his wife and asking his five sons why none of them had ever joined the military. In 2008, Scott Pelley hammered John McCain on the Wall Street bailout: “But why would you let the Wall Street executives sail away on their yachts and leave this on the American taxpayer?”
Back in 2000, “60 Minutes” devoted a whole segment to crackpot author J.H. Hatfield and his book trashing George W. Bush called “Fortunate Son.” They put on this Lesley Stahl segment despite Hatfield being unable to prove Bush was arrested for cocaine possession and despite Hatfield once paying for a hit man. Their website announced: “Just because he lied to his editors about being a convicted felon isn’t a good enough reason for those editors to doubt his book.”
They weren’t kidding. For the die-hard Democrats at CBS “News,” Republicans don’t deserve any decency — including the candidates they now celebrate as the decent ones.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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Just more examples of how the mind bloated American media believe themselves to be the only institutions fit to select who our leaders are supposed to be, and how this country is supposed to function, never trusting THE PEOPLE who really are supposed to be in charge. These slow creeping 60 minutemen in their collective arrogance would defiantly seek to gain power in acts of deception, and elitist media truth bending, what our quick acting minutemen founding fathers gained in sacrificing of spilled blood and tyranny defiance. It’s the organized liberal media of smear campaigns that seeks to win by smearing opponents by mucking up their victims right down to the last pore, using our formerly clean American cloth of many colors as a base product in manufacturing the very fruit of the looms they claim the will protect the American body politic from Conservative contamination which the loonies now use as a torturing weapon substitute to accomplish in political wedgies and smear campaigns, what real porous toilet paper was designed to clean up.
“When The Government Fears The People, There Is Liberty, When The People Fears The Goverment, there Is Tyranny.”
Author Unknown.
Enough of this… the media must be held accountable. We as Americans believe in a free press, HOWEVER this is no longer a ‘press’ it has become the Propaganda Wing of the Dem Party. And being a political entity should fall under a different set of rules and governance.
Hence why i keep saying the media would never have been included in the ‘free press’ portion of the first amendment, IF OUR FOUNDING FATHERS could see what HACKS the media would become.
The rabid media Nazi accuse Trump of wishing he had generals like Hitler did. Absent the Einsatzgruppen Russian Front death squad generals, I guarantee you even German American WWII General and later President Eisenhower Ike would have preferred the German generals who conquered France in about 3 weeks, or those like the North African Desert Fox Rommel who conspired to kill Hitler off and paid for it with his life. Compare that to the Biden Afghanistan cut and run military weapon General funders of Muslim Terrorists who preferred to preserve politics and a puffed up President Biden before American honor.
YET if trump was ANYWHERE even near 10% of what hitler was, EVERY DAMN ONE OF THEM would be fleeing the nation right now, because they KNOW HE’d lock them all up..