The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) filed the complaint with the newly appointed CBS News Ombudsman on Wednesday. 60 minutes Edited his recent interview with Donald Trump.
Raskin’s letter to the ombudsman, Kenneth Weinstein, seeks information about Trump’s influence at the network following the administration’s approval of the Skydance-Paramount merger.
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“President Trump appears to be undermining CBS’s ‘journalistic integrity’ by increasing direct control over CBS’s editorial decisions, violating the right to be free from government coercion and manipulation,” Ruskin wrote in his letter.
In seeking the FCC’s green light, the David Ellison-run company agreed to establish an ombudsman to take complaints about news division coverage.
Members of Congress keyed in on Trump’s side 60 minutes Stay with Norah O’Donnell. The interview lasted about 90 minutes but only 28 minutes were broadcast. In the name of transparency, CBS posted the full transcript and an extended, 73-minute version of the interview online.
That publication of the full transcript allowed for a new level of scrutiny about what was left in and what was left out in the broadcast segment.
Ruskin wrote, “When interviewer Norah O’Donnell asked about corruption behind President Trump’s pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao — who pleaded guilty to money laundering and whose company made a $2 billion deal with the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture — the president said: Trump said, “I can defend. I’m not worried – I just want to ask you this question,’ he said, adding that CBS has withheld important information from the public from both video versions.
Raskin also noted that the broadcast and online video removed a portion of the interview where Trump “brags about his network’s buzz.”
Trump said, “Indeed 60 minutes Gave me a lot of money. And you don’t have to keep it, because I don’t want to offend you…. 60 minutes I was forced to pay – a lot of money because they took it [Vice President Harris’s] Answer that it was too bad, it was the election change.
Before the Skydance-Paramount merger got the FCC’s greenlight, Paramount’s previous regime agreed to pay $16 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit over how it edited an interview with Kamala Harris before last year’s presidential election. Although many legal experts and the network itself considered the lawsuit to be unfounded, it was seen as an obstacle to getting the merger agreement approved.
A spokesperson for Paramount did not immediately return a request for comment. The Hill first reported on Raskin’s letter.
Ruskin’s complaint turned the tables a bit, as it was expected that the Paramount-appointed ombudsman would field complaints primarily from the right, not the left. In his letter, Raskin raised issues with how Weinstein should evaluate the complaints.
Weinstein is the former president and CEO of the Hudson Institute, a right-wing DC think tank. “Your role is fundamentally different from traditional news ombudsmen, as you report directly to Paramount executives rather than advocating for the public,” Raskin wrote. Among other things, he is asking Weinstein for “a written explanation of the editorial standards you apply in reviewing complaints, including how you define unfair bias versus legitimate editorial judgment, and whether allowing interview subjects to make direct editorial decisions violates CBS News standards.”
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