Updated at 2:15pm Eastern
The junior Democrat sitting as an FCC Commissioner has issued another missive against the Chairman and Republican Commissioner Nate Simington for moving forward with a probe of CBS News for alleged news distortion — a claim made by President Trump days before he won the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Anna M. Gómez, who has already slammed the FCC under the leadership of Brendan Carr for the agency’s “weaponization against CBS,” issued a biting follow-up statement on Wednesday. In it, she reprimands Republican leaders for an “unprecedented move by the FCC to open a proceeding and release materials from an active investigation.”
She’s referring to an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris that aired on CBS. Controversy surfaced in October 2024, when then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump posted to the Truth Social platform that the network’s 60 Minutes had “just created the Greatest Fraud in Broadcast History.” He suggested that CBS should lose its license. Then-FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel issued a statement dismissing the suggestion, calling it a threat against free speech.
What did CBS do? The network aired two different portions of Harris’s response to the same question about the conflict in the Middle East — one in an early excerpt on “Face the Nation” and the other on the “60 Minutes” full broadcast. Conservatives have rallied behind Trump as saying that this, right before the election, is manipulated journalism. CBS News repeatedly refuted President Trump’s claims that news distortion was committed by its journalists and/or producers.
On Wednesday, CBS News went a step further by publishing the “same transcripts and videos of our interview with Vice President Kamala Harris that we provided to the FCC.”
Indeed, as of 3pm on February 5, visitors to CBSNews.com could see the transcripts and video. “They show – consistent with 60 Minutes’ repeated assurances to the public – that the 60 Minutes broadcast was not doctored or deceitful,” CBS said.
CBS further explained that the issue at hand concerns one question from 60 Minutes‘ interview with then-Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Harris: whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is listening to the Biden-Harris Administration.
The news organization explains, “We broadcast a longer portion of the vice president’s answer on Face the Nation and broadcast a shorter excerpt from the same answer on 60 Minutes the next day. Each excerpt reflects the substance of the vice president’s answer. As the full transcript shows, we edited the interview to ensure that as much of the vice president’s answers to 60 Minutes‘ many questions were included in our original broadcast while fairly representing those answers. 60 Minutes‘ hard-hitting questions of the vice president speak for themselves.”
CBS News then shared to the public three full-length transcripts of its interviews with the vice president. They are:
- The full transcript of the interview with the vice president at her residence;
- The full transcript of the “walk and talk” with the vice president; and
- The full transcript of the interview with former Congresswoman Liz Cheney and Vice President Harris.
At these links, you will find videos corresponding to these interviews:
- Interview with the vice president at her residence
- “Walk and talk” with the vice president
- Interview with Cheney and Harris
If that wasn’t enough, CBS News, at this link, provided all transcripts provided to the FCC, “many of which are duplicates that reflect audio from additional camera angles.”
This led to outrage from Gómez.
“The transcript and footage of this interview provide no evidence that CBS and its affiliated broadcast stations violated FCC rules,” she said. “Having now seen these materials, I see no reason to continue pursuing this investigation. The FCC should now move to dismiss this fishing expedition to avoid further politicizing our enforcement actions.”
“Having now seen these materials, I see no reason to continue pursuing this investigation. The FCC should now move to dismiss this fishing expedition to avoid further politicizing our enforcement actions.” — Anna M. Gómez
Gómez continued, “It is unprecedented and reckless for the FCC to disclose the status of an active investigation and publicly share materials before its conclusion and before they’ve been shared with other members of this independent body. The agency’s Enforcement Bureau generally treats highly sensitive matters with confidentiality and discretion because they can have market impacts. This action sets a dangerous precedent that threatens to undermine trust in the FCC’s role as an impartial regulator. The FCC should stop trying to keep up with this Administration’s focus on partisan culture wars and return to its core focus of protecting consumers, promoting competition, and securing our communications networks.”
She then reminded the public of the FCC’s definition of a news distortion claim, which “must involve a significant event and not merely a minor or incidental aspect of the news report.” As a result, she said, broadcasters are only subject to enforcement if it can be proven that they have deliberately distorted a factual news report. Expressions of opinion or errors stemming from mistakes are not actionable.
And, she concluded, it is for these reasons that “FCC experts had previously dismissed the complaint against a CBS broadcast station due to lack of evidence and because it fell far short of the high standard needed for agency action.”
MEDIA BUREAU DOCKET ESTABLISHED
By mid-afternoon Thursday, it became known that the FCC moved forward with establishing MB Docket No. 25-73, and establishing a comment period for the CBS “news distortion” complaint.
Ignoring Gómez’s concerns, the Commission said, “Given the value of transparency and demonstrated interest in this ongoing FCC matter, the FCC has determined that the public interest would be served by making the transcript and video available and by opening a docket to seek comment on the issues that have been raised.”
As such, the Republican-led FCC has given merit to the Center for American Rights (CAR), which filed the CBS News complaint in October 2024.
Comments are due on March 7, and Reply Comments are due on March 24, 2025.
