“Selective editing” or “news distortion”? However one may call it, the subject has gained particular significance in recent months thanks to President Trump’s now-settled lawsuit against CBS News & Stations parent Paramount Global focused on how an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris appeared differently across two separate broadcasts.
Democrats on Capitol Hill lambasted the lawsuit, which the FCC under Brendan Carr insists has nothing to do with a still-open complaint filed by a conservative political action group alleging CBS indeed tinkered with the interview to make Harris look better days before the election for U.S. President.
Now, two key Senators are blasting the Carr Commission for a supposed double standard. Why? An interview with then-candidate and former President Donald J. Trump conducted in June 2024 appears to have been edited by FOX News to make him look better ahead of Election Day, say Ed Markey and Chuck Schumer.
The Senate Democrats from Massachusetts and New York, respectively, on Wednesday wrote to Chairman Carr in regard to FOX News’ alleged action. It involves an interview with Mr. Trump about his intentions regarding the release of potentially sensitive files in the matter involving the late financier and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
As the politicians see it, “The selective editing of the Trump interview led viewers to believe that Trump unqualifiedly supported the files’ release when it reality he equivocated.”
Markey and Schumer are referring to a June 2, 2024 Fox & Friends interview that also aired on TV affiliates and via FOX News Radio. Last weekend, as Trump discounted the importance of the Epstein Files on his Truth Social platform, footage of the archived interview resurfaced as talk of Trump’s potential ties to the disgraced former friend gained momentum.
In the aired footage of the interview from 13 months ago, Trump said, “Yeah, yeah I would.” But, right after those words — in a portion of the interview unaired on Fox & Friends — Trump continued, “I guess I would. I think that less so because, you don’t know, you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would.”
This, in the eyes of Markey and Schumer, is being decried as a “politically based double standard” given how the FCC opened an inquiry into claims CBS tinkered with the Harris interview and, now, how FOX engaged in what news reporters are independently calling a “massaged” interview with Mr. Trump.
“This selective editing appears to be far more misleading than the run-of-the-mill editorial decision-making in CBS’s interview with Harris last fall,” Markey and Schumer state.
To be clear, the Senators do not want the FCC to investigate FOX News. Rather, given what it is believed to have engaged in, they want the CBS probe ended pronto.
Even if Schumer and Markey wanted the FCC to open an inquiry into FOX News, it can’t — and they know it, acknowledging that it is a cable television outlet and outside of the Commission’s purview. Sort of. They note that Fox Corporation, FOX News’ parent, is a licensee of broadcast television stations while erroneously claiming FOX “owns and operates dozens” of radio stations. It is iHeartMedia’s Premiere Networks that distributes all FOX-branded radio content and FOX does not own AMs or FMs in the United States.
Nevertheless, Schumer and Markey are suggesting the Commission take the route that liberal gadfly Preston Padden — a former FOX and ABC leader — has taken in a failed attempt to get the FCC to deny the license renewal of WTXF-29 in Philadelphia on the grounds that it aired false reports tied to the 2020 U.S. presidential election as supplied by FOX News.
“Any over-the-air rebroadcast of the edited [Trump] interview by those broadcast licensees could bring Fox News’ editorial decision-making within the FCC’s jurisdiction,” Schumer and Markey conclude.
Again, rather than open an investigation — something the Senate Democrats say is warranted given the CBS probe — they implore, “The FCC should stop its partisan investigations into the news media and cease interfering with independent journalism altogether.”
Rep. Robert Garcia sent a similar letter to Carr. This was noticed by FOX News, which commented on the matter in a statement sent to RBR+TVBR late Thursday.
“As previously stated, there was no selective or deceptive editing whatsoever,” the statement reads. “Portions of the initial interview that aired on Fox & Friends Weekend with then-candidate Trump on June 2, 2024, had standard editorial cuts for time and the full answer to the Epstein question aired on the following day’s show. The entire unedited interview was also run on multiple FOX News Media platforms with full transparency on June 3, 2024, including audio, digital and streaming, while the entire transcript was posted on foxnews.com.”
For those following the CBS News matter with the Kamala Harris interview, that response could seem nearly identical to the defensive statements released by the Paramount subsidiary — only fueling the politicians’ pleas to get the FCC to end its CBS investigation.
