News Distortion Complaint Over Harris Interview Not Seen Drawing FCC Penalties

A news distortion complaint filed Wednesday against CBS by the Center for American Rights (CAR) over the network's recent interview with Vice President/Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is unlikely to result in FCC penalties. However, a wild card is the proposed Skydance/Paramount deal, which could spark FCC action on the news distortion complaint, attorneys told us. Paramount Global is CBS' parent.

“The FCC has yet to find anything to be news distortion,” said Arthur Belendiuk, a broadcast attorney who has litigated FCC news distortion cases and represents the Media and Democracy Project in its petition against Fox’s WTXF Philadelphia’s license.

The complaint against CBS centers on separate broadcasts of the Harris interview. The first aired on Face the Nation Oct. 6, the second on a 60 Minutes special the next day. “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” from Harris, said a CAR news release.

In the Face the Nation clip, Harris replies to a comment on Netanyahu that “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.” On the 60 Minutes special Harris responds to the same comment: “We are not gonna stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”

The discrepancies “amount to deliberate news distortion -- a violation of FCC rules governing broadcasters' public interest obligations,” the release said. “This complaint concerns an act of significant and substantial news alteration, made in the middle of a heated presidential campaign,” the complaint said. Attorneys told us the FCC would likely view the edits as examples of CBS exercising news judgment on which clips to use rather than as news distortion. The complaint, filed against CBS’ owned and operated station WCBS New York, calls on the FCC to direct CBS to release the complete transcript of the Harris interview. CBS and NAB didn’t comment. CAR previously filed FCC and Federal Election Commission complaints against CBS over the Trump/Harris debate.

The FCC’s 50-year-old news distortion policy bars licensed broadcast stations from running news reports “deliberately intended to mislead viewers or listeners.” It has rarely been used, attorneys told us. The most recent case cited in the CAR complaint is from 1995, but in 1998, Belendiuk represented a client in a news distortion complaint against CBS that the FCC rejected. After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit remanded the matter to the agency, it ended in a settlement rather than a finding of news distortion. The agency “has a public-facing news distortion policy, but it never wants to find anything to be news distortion,” Belendiuk said. “News distortion ‘must involve a significant event and not merely a minor or incidental aspect of the news report,’” the FCC policy says.

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has repeatedly said the agency won’t act on station licenses over the content of their news broadcasts. However, Commissioner Nathan Simington indicated support for an investigation into CBS. “Big if true. Will look into it,” he said in the post on X Wednesday, which included a link to a Fox report on the complaint. In a footnote, the CAR complaint “reserves the right to request the recusal of any FCC commissioner who reviews this matter in the future who prejudged this issue without seeing any evidence or legal argument.”

Commissioner Brendan Carr declined to comment specifically on the CBS matter in a post-FCC meeting news conference Thursday. “Every decision that the FCC makes should be consistent with the law, the agency’s precedent, and consistent with the First Amendment,” Carr said, an answer similar to his responses to recent lawmaker questions seeking his opinion on former President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s repeated calls for FCC action on broadcaster licenses (see 2409190063). Trump repeated this pattern in a Truth Social post on the CAR FCC complaint Thursday. “60 MINUTES SHOULD BE IMMEDIATELY TAKEN OFF THE AIR - ELECTION INTERFERENCE. CBS SHOULD LOSE ITS LICENSE. THIS IS THE BIGGEST SCANDAL IN BROADCAST HISTORY,” said the post.

The news distortion rule applies mainly in license renewals and transfers, and it’s unclear that the FCC can compel CBS to issue a transcript, said American Action Forum Director-Technology and Innovation Policy Jeffrey Westling. “I am not sure the Commission can enforce this kind of injunctive relief, and if not, the complaint would fail to assert the prima facie case for news distortion,” Westling said. “This would allow the Commission to just ignore it or dismiss it entirely.” In a blog post, Westling recently said Congress should remove the FCC’s authority to go after licensees for news distortion (see 2410080037).

Sitting on such complaints without acting is the FCC’s traditional method of handling news distortion and other content-based complaints against licenses, attorneys told us. The Media and Democracy Project’s complaint (see 2307060065) against the license of Fox station WTXF Philadelphia, on a different basis, has been stalled without FCC action for more than a year. The recent complaint against CBS is similar to the MAD petition in that both target an individual station over the actions of its parent network, said University of Minnesota media law professor Christopher Terry.

Belendiuk and MAD advocate Preston Padden said Thursday that their complaint against WTXF has firmer footing than the CAR complaint. Said Padden, “The MAD petition is solidly grounded on a judicial finding that Fox willfully and repeatedly presented false news,” while “the complaint against CBS seems to be based on mere political conjecture": “Inexplicably, Commissioner Simington posted on X that the complaint against CBS should be investigated, but put out a public statement that the MAD petition should be dismissed." Fox has argued that the MAD petition violates FCC precedent and should be thrown out.

The FCC might not be able to ignore the CAR petition indefinitely because of the proposed $8 billion Skydance purchase of CBS parent Paramount Global and its stations (see 2409060057), attorneys told us. The license likely can’t be transferred until the complaint is resolved, they added. The FCC would be likely to rule against CAR, but that would allow CAR to then pursue the issue in the courts. With such a proceeding possibly holding up the Skydance deal, CBS would be highly motivated to settle with CAR, attorneys told us.