CBS Accused of News Distortion in Vice President Kamala Harris Interview — Center for American Rights Files Formal FCC Complaint
CBS News
The Center for American Rights (CAR) has filed a formal complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) against WCBS-TV, a CBS-owned station, for engaging in significant and intentional news distortion.
The complaint stems from two different broadcasts of the same interview aired on CBS's "Face the Nation" and "60 Minutes" on October 5 and 6, 2024. In both broadcasts, the same question was posed to Vice President Kamala Harris regarding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but CBS aired two conflicting responses. These discrepancies, CAR argues, amount to deliberate news distortion—a violation of FCC rules governing broadcasters' public interest obligations. The complaint demands CBS release the unedited transcript of the interview to set the record straight.
“This isn’t just about one interview or one network,” said Daniel Suhr, President of the Center for American Rights. “This is about the public’s trust in the media on critical issues of national security and international relations during one of the most consequential elections of our time. When broadcasters manipulate interviews and distort reality, it undermines democracy itself. The FCC must act swiftly to restore public confidence in our news media.”
The complaint cites long-standing FCC precedent that broadcasters cannot engage in intentional falsification or suppression of news and seeks an order compelling CBS to release the full unedited transcript of the interview.
This filing comes shortly after the Center for American Rights' recent complaints against ABC News with both the FCC and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for clear sponsor favoritism in the Harris-Trump debate broadcast by ABC News on September 10, 2024. In that complaint, CAR argued that ABC’s moderators unfairly targeted former President Trump while providing Vice President Harris a free pass on factual inaccuracies.
The FCC complaint can be found here.
About the Center for American Rights
The Center for American Rights is led by Supreme Court-winning attorneys Patrick Hughes and Daniel Suhr, renowned for their leading roles in landmark cases like Janus v. AFSCME and BST Holdings, LLC v. OSHA. Hughes and Suhr are also representing student victims at Columbia University in a high-profile lawsuit stemming from illegal encampments on campus earlier this year.
For more information or to arrange interviews, please contact media@americanrights.org.