Major Conservative Groups Urge Trump-Backed FCC Chair to Drop Investigation Into CBS’s ’60 Minutes’
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Several major conservative groups joined left-leaning organizations this week to call for Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr to end the investigation of a news distortion complaint against CBS’s 60 Minutes.
President Donald Trump, who nominated Carr, has sued CBS News’s parent company Paramount Global for $20 billion, claiming that 60 Minutes deceptively edited its interview with Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential campaign.
Reuters reported on Thursday evening that conservative groups including The Center for Individual Freedom, Americans for Tax Reform, and Taxpayers Protection Alliance warned Carr that an “adverse ruling against CBS would constitute regulatory overreach and advance precedent that can be weaponized by future FCCs.”
Variety’s Cynthia Littleton noted that the FCC’s probe into CBS has resulted in some strange bedfellows across the political spectrum:
In this moment of fierce political division, few issues have the power to unite Americans and institutions from the left, right and center. One of them appears to be CBS and the pressure it is facing from the Federal Communications Commission over the “60 Minutes” interview broadcast last fall with Vice President Kamala Harris.
…The FCC’s inquiry, prompted by a complaint filed by the conservative nonprofit Center for American Rights, echoes the novel legal arguments made in a civil lawsuit that then-candidate Donald Trump filed against CBS last year. It also comes as the FCC is weighing approval of aspects of the $8 billion acquisition of CBS parent company Paramount Global by Skydance Media and RedBird Capital. “60 Minutes” and CBS News have been caught in the crossfire of a case that will likely become a historical footnote — but could set a dangerous precedent for journalism.
The conservative groups did take a swing at the liberal media while asking Carr to reject the complaint: “We understand and appreciate why many conservatives would seek to now ‘level the playing field’ and subject other media organizations – such as CBS’s parent company Paramount – to the same regulatory cudgel that has long afflicted conservative media.”
However, other conservatives appear to agree with the group’s overall message. Matt Mackowiak, a former George W. Bush administration official, wrote in Townhall this month that it was “troubling to me that Chairman Carr, a conservative, has opened the door to punishing CBS for exercising editorial discretion under the First Amendment, thereby exposing conservative news outlets in all media to the same sort of attack in the future.”
“Conservatives have spent almost 40 years building a successful alternative to the left-leaning media establishment. Let’s not cripple those foundations, and roll back the fundamental right of free speech, just for the sake of ‘owning the libs,’” Mackowiak concluded.
Paramount Global has moved to dismiss Trump’s lawsuit, calling it “baseless.”
“They not only ask for $20 billion in damages but also seek an order directing how a news organization may exercise its editorial judgment in the future. The First Amendment stands resolutely against these demands,” added the motion to dismiss filed in early March.
After the FCC and CBS released all the unedited footage from the Harris interview, Mediaite’s Colby Hall dug through all the material and argued that CBS “did everything right.”
“After careful review, I can confirm why CBS complied with the FCC’s demands: the footage and transcripts reveal that 60 Minutes followed the standard operating procedure that any news outlet would in editing a taped interview with a high-profile subject for air,” Hall concluded, rebuffing Trump’s claims that the interview was somehow deceptively edited to make Harris look better.
