'60 Minutes,' under fire for Kamala Harris editing decision, has history of liberal controversies
"60 Minutes" is in hot water again.
The longtime news program has been plagued by controversy in recent days after it edited an unflattering exchange Vice President Kamala Harris had with veteran correspondent Bill Whitaker, which aired in a preview clip on Sunday's "Face The Nation" but was changed for Monday's primetime election special.
Harris was mocked by conservatives for offering a lengthy "word salad" when she was asked why it seemed like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasn’t listening to the U.S.
"Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of, many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region," Harris responded in Sunday's "Face the Nation" clip.
CBS ‘60 MINUTES’ AIRS TWO DIFFERENT ANSWERS FROM VP HARRIS TO THE SAME QUESTION
However, a shorter, more focused answer from the vice president was shown to the same question on Monday night.
"We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end," Harris said in the primetime special.
It appears the two different responses were part of the same long answer, but CBS has not offered answers for the discrepancy.
CBS News is facing mounting pressure to release the transcript of the full Harris interview to account for the discrepancy. Meanwhile, former President Trump has called for the network to lose its broadcasting license, and former CBS staffers are demanding an outside probe to look into the controversy.
It's yet another controversy and accusation of liberal bias the venerable show has taken in recent years.
In the final days leading up to the 2020 election, then-President Trump famously sparred with "60 Minutes" veteran Lesley Stahl over the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, which had just been unearthed by The New York Post.
Trump insisted at the time that then-candidate Joe Biden was "in the midst of a scandal."
"He's not," Stahl gleefully replied.
"Of course he is, Lesley," Trump sternly doubled down.
"No, c'mon," Stahl continued to reject the president's claim, before lecturing him, "This is '60 Minutes' and we can't put on things that we can't verify."
CBS News eventually went on and verified the infamous laptop in 2022.
At the time, the laptop and its contents were accused of being part of a Russian disinformation campaign in wide swaths of the media, and the New York Post's story was even blocked from being shared on Twitter.
In May 2020, "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley cast significant doubt on the Trump administration's assertions that the COVID pandemic stemmed from a lab leak in Wuhan, China.
At the time, Pelley told viewers "both the White House and the Chinese Communist Party have been less than honest" and instead hyped the credibility of Peter Daszak, president of the group EcoHealth Alliance and one of the most vocal foes of the lab-leak theory. EcoHealth Alliance received government funding from the National Institutes of Health and has had a long working partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which has increasingly been viewed as the possible origin for the disastrous pandemic.
Pelley lamented how the Trump administration abruptly ended EcoHealth's funding because of a "political disinformation campaign targeting China's Wuhan Institute."
"As the U.S. led the world in illness and death, the White House moved the focus to the Chinese government," Pelley told viewers as he swiped the Trump administration. "Last Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attempted to resurrect a debunked theory that the virus was man-made in China … The administration has offered no evidence of an accident or genetic engineering."
The "60 Minutes" correspondent pushed the notion that the virus stemmed from a wet market and turned to another expert who suggested that the virus came naturally from a pangolin.
"There is zero evidence that this virus came out of a lab in China," Daszak insisted.
"Does the Wuhan Institute of Virology, to your knowledge, have this virus in its inventory?" Pelley asked.
"No," Daszak answered.
"Why do you say so?" Pelley followed.
"The closest known relative is one that's different enough that it is not SARS-CoV 2, so there's just no evidence that anybody had it in the lab anywhere in the world prior to the outbreak," Daszak answered.
CBS News has said its report was based on the facts known at that time. But fast-forward to March 2021 when Pelley's colleague Lesley Stahl declared a potential lab-leak a "leading theory" to the pandemic's origin.
Notably, Pelley was tapped to interview Trump for the "60 Minutes" election special before the former president decided to skip the sit-down entirely.
In April 2021, "60 Minutes" pushed the false narrative that Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was engulfed in a "pay for play" scheme involving COVID vaccines.
A preview clip released ahead of the full report's airing showed "60 Minutes" correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi confronting the governor at a press conference over allegations that he rewarded Publix, a southern supermarket chain with more than 850 Florida locations, with COVID vaccines after the company made a sizable donation to his PAC.
"Publix, as you know, donated $100,000 to your campaign," Alfonsi began in the clip. "And then you rewarded them with the exclusive rights to distribute the vaccination in Palm Beach --"
"First, of all what you're saying is wrong," DeSantis interrupted.
"How is that not pay for play?" Alfonsi then asked.
"That's a fake narrative," DeSantis replied. "I met with the county mayor, I met with the administrator, I met with all the folks at Palm Beach County and I said, 'Here's some of the options: We can do more drive-thru sites, we can give more to hospitals, we can do the Publix.' And they said, 'We think that would be the easiest thing for our residents."
Alfonsi then narrated that Palm Beach County Commissioner Melissa McKinlay claimed DeSantis "never met with her about the Publix deal."
"The criticism here is that is pay for play, Governor," Alfonsi told DeSantis.
"And it's wrong, it's wrong," the governor shot back. "It's a fake narrative. I just disabused you of the narrative. And you don't care about the facts. Because, obviously, I laid it out for you in a way that is irrefutable."
However, the CBS program drastically edited the exchange by cutting out several minutes of the governor's comments to Alfonsi which explained that CVS and Walgreens had the vaccine first during its rollout at senior communities and long-term care facilities, while Publix was the first chain to volunteer to roll out the vaccine in its stores. DeSantis also told Alfonsi that CVS and Walgreens would also get the vaccine when their mission of vaccinating Florida's seniors was completed.
Despite the backlash the "60 Minutes" preview clip sparked on social media, the exchange remained edited during that Sunday's broadcast, a stark departure from the edit that was made between the preview clip of the Harris interview versus what aired in primetime.
Democratic state officials, conservative pundits, Publix, and DeSantis himself all rejected the story pushed by "60 Minutes."
A CBS spokesperson initially told Fox News Digital about the edited exchange: "As we always do for clarity, 60 MINUTES used the portion of the Governor's over 2-minute response that directly addressed the question from the correspondent." CBS News repeatedly defended its reporting while never addressing the criticisms over its "pay-for-play" push.
CBS didn't respond to a request for comment.