By Michael Schwarz October 9, 2024 at 9:57am
Every honest American knows that the establishment media lies on behalf of powerful people. Thus, when we point out instances of dishonesty, it often feels as if we do little more than multiply examples.
Sometimes, however, those examples prove so egregious that, no matter how familiar they seem, and no matter how exhausted the years of similar and repeated outrages have made us feel, their sheer brazenness still manages to shock us.
Tuesday on the social media platform X, an observant video editor named “MAZE” noticed that someone at CBS News appeared to have removed one of Vice President Kamala Harris’ most jaw-droppingly incoherent answers from her recent “60 Minutes” interview then replaced it with an altogether different answer — an apparent cut-and-paste editing job that one X user described as “a huge journalistic scandal.”
The editing tactic — if deliberate — replaced Harris’ incoherent answer with a coherent one. See the clip below, which had more than 6.8 million views as of Wednesday morning.
Remember Kamala’s word salad answer about Israel on 60 Minutes? It’s gone.
This is what many Americans will now see. pic.twitter.com/H4w7btDv6x
— MAZE (@mazemoore) October 8, 2024
Libs of TikTok, a prominent conservative account with more than 3.5 million followers on X, reposted MAZE’s clip, thereby amplifying the original video and generating another 2.7 million views on its own.
“BREAKING: 60 minutes just quietly *edited out* Kamala’s word salad answer on Israel. Unreal,” Libs of TikTok wrote in an accompanying post.
BREAKING: 60 minutes just quietly *edited out* Kamala’s word salad answer on Israel. Unreal.
Great catch by @mazemoore pic.twitter.com/u3SbMqKz7w
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) October 8, 2024
Can the mainstream media be trusted?
From there, the apparent act of deception garnered widespread attention and generated substantial outrage.
An X user named John G. West, in fact, called it “a huge journalistic scandal.”
“Did CBS do a second take of the question to help her? Did CBS take unaired footage from another question and splice it in? That’s unclear at this point,” West continued.
“CBS needs to release the unedited and full version of the interview so people can see what actually took place and how they constructed the new answer. If the answer came from another part of the interview, someone should be fired,” he concluded.
This is—or should be—a huge journalistic scandal. I had been waiting to comment until I was able to verify some things for myself. This much is now unquestionable in my view: 60 Minutes/CBS has posted two entirely different versions of Harris’s answer to the same exact question.… https://t.co/M8JNc8smwh
— John G. West (@JGWestDI) October 8, 2024
Later on Tuesday, CBS released the interview transcript. Incredibly, it featured the edited version of the vice president’s answer.
“This leaves two possibilities. Either CBS inexplicably spliced Kamala’s word salad answer into the preview clip or CBS doctored the transcript,” one X user wrote.
The official transcript issued by CBS features Kamala’s edited answer. This leaves two possibilities. Either CBS inexplicably spliced Kamala’s word salad answer into the preview clip or CBS doctored the transcript. https://t.co/H6bhlA6B90 https://t.co/mqLVL0tAHm pic.twitter.com/KlDntDTsNE
— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) October 9, 2024
They do not teach you this in journalism school for a reason. This is bad.
— Jason Romano (@JasonRomano) October 9, 2024
By Wednesday, the scandal had not dissipated. In fact, former President Donald Trump made sure of it.
“I’ve never seen this before, but the producers of 60 Minutes sliced and diced (‘cut and pasted’) Lyin’ Kamala’s answers to questions, which were virtually incoherent, over and over again,” Trump wrote Wednesday morning on the social media platform Truth Social.
The former president also described CBS’ action as potentially “a major Campaign Finance Violation.”
Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, agreed with Trump.
“This could be the worst violation of journalistic ethics ever during a presidential election,” Ackman wrote.
Ackman also called for an “acknowledgement and apology” from CBS, as well as an “unedited, unexpurgated interview.”
“Anything less is a whitewash and an acknowledgment that CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon orchestrated the manipulation. Who else on the CBS team would be bold enough to do the cut and paste at the risk of destroying @60Minutes?” he added.
.@realDonaldTrump is correct. This could be the worst violation of journalistic ethics ever during a presidential election. @60Minutes literally manipulated @KamalaHarris answer (after the public blowback of her answer from the preview release of the excerpt) by cutting, culling,… https://t.co/aqrvv4LJTE
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) October 9, 2024
In short, Harris gave a dreadful answer that her CBS allies appear to have replaced with a better one.
This does not merely qualify as election interference. That would be too generous.
Instead, this sort of apparent manipulation has the tendency to make every honest person, including a professional historian, question every piece of information received from a powerful source, past or present.
At minimum, it should convince even the most hitherto skeptical voters that something approximating Orwell’s “1984” has arrived.
Michael Schwarz holds a Ph.D. in History and has taught at multiple colleges and universities. He has published one book and numerous essays on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Early U.S. Republic. He loves dogs, baseball, and freedom. After meandering spiritually through most of early adulthood, he has rediscovered his faith in midlife and is eager to continue learning about it from the great Christian thinkers.
Michael Schwarz holds a Ph.D. in History and has taught at multiple colleges and universities. He has published one book and numerous essays on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Early U.S. Republic. He loves dogs, baseball, and freedom. After meandering spiritually through most of early adulthood, he has rediscovered his faith in midlife and is eager to continue learning about it from the great Christian thinkers.
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