Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the Democratic leader on the House Judiciary Committee, filed a complaint with the newly appointed CBS News ombudsman on Wednesday, alleging 60 minutes Edited recent interview with Donald Trump.
In his letter to Ombudsman Kenneth Weinstein, Raskin also sought information about Trump’s influence on the network after the administration failed to approve Skydance’s merger with Paramount.
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“President Trump appears to be increasingly taking direct control of CBS’s editorial decisions, undermining CBS’s ‘journalistic integrity’ while violating its right to be free from government coercion and manipulation,” Raskin wrote in the letter.
In seeking approval from the Federal Communications Commission, the company, run by David Ellison, agreed to create an ombudsman to hear complaints about the news division’s coverage.
The congressman highlighted aspects of Trump 60 minutes Sit down with Norah O’Donnell. The interview lasted about 90 minutes, but only 28 minutes were aired. In the name of transparency, CBS released the full interview transcript and a 73-minute extended version of the interview online.
The release of the full transcript allows for new scrutiny of what was left and what was left out of the portion of the broadcast.
Raskin writes, “When interviewer Norah O’Donnell asked President Trump whether there was corruption behind his pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao — who pleaded guilty to money laundering and whose company struck a $2 billion deal with the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture — President Trump took a defensive stance: “I can’t say because — I can’t say — I’m not worried. I don’t – I don’t want you to ask that question. But I let you ask,” he said. CBS omitted the entire exchange about potential conflicts of interest in both versions of the video, depriving the public of critical information about President Trump’s apparent paid-for-pardon program and his apparent discomfort.
Raskin also noted that broadcast and online videos omitted portions of the interview in which Trump “bragged about his overhaul of the network.”
Trump said: “Actually 60 minutes Pay me a lot of money. You don’t have to wear this because I don’t want to embarrass you… 60 minutes Forced to pay me a lot of money because they took [Vice President Harris’s] The answer is so bad it will change the election. “
Before Skydance’s merger with Paramount was approved by the FCC, Paramount’s former regime agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Trump over the way the news magazine edited an interview with Kamala Harris weeks before last year’s presidential election. While many legal experts and the networks themselves believe the lawsuit is meritless, it is seen as a roadblock to the merger deal being approved.
A Paramount spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Raskin’s letter was first reported by The Hill.
Raskin’s complaint is turning the tide as the ombudsman appointed by Paramount is expected to deal primarily with complaints from the right rather than the left. In his letter, Raskin raised the issue of how Weinstein evaluates complaints.
Weinstein is the former president and CEO of the Hudson Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C. “Your role is fundamentally different from that of a traditional news ombudsman in that you report directly to Paramount executives rather than advocating for the public,” Raskin wrote. Among other things, he asked Weinstein to “provide a written explanation of the editorial standards you apply when reviewing complaints, including how you define undue bias versus legitimate editorial judgment and allow interview subjects to guide editorial decisions about whether CBS News Standards were violated.”
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