Government should have no role in policing news distortions
Earlier month, CBS News complied with an FCC request to hand over the raw footage and transcript from an October 2024 interview with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. The FCC has re-opened a closed file of a complaint that alleges CBS doctored the interview.
President Trump has already weighed in with his conclusion in a Truth Social post — CBS “defrauded the public,” he claims, and the network “should lose its license.”
The current FCC investigation is focused on edits by CBS that split Harris’s response to a question on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into two parts. The first sentence of her answer aired Oct. 5, 2024, on “Face the Nation.” The following day, “60 Minutes” used the same question but substituted the second part of her response, according to the transcript and raw footage of the complete interview in the materials sent to the FCC and released online by CBS, as well.
When the "news-distortion" complaint was initially dismissed in December, then-FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel indicated that it would “weaponize the licensing authority of the FCC in a way that is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment.” Indeed, since the agency was established in 1934, there is no case on record that has found news editing constituted news distortion, subjecting a broadcast licensee to potential regulatory penalties.
Strikingly absent from this dramatic series of events, however, is the type of bold freedom of the press declaration that one would expect from the stewards of the Fourth Estate. Today’s broadcast journalism leaders need to dust off their history books for inspiration by Frank Stanton, a legendary CBS president, who recognized that it was important to set a principled example not just for his company, but for the media industry writ large.
In 1971, CBS News aired “The Selling of the Pentagon,” a prime time special that reported on the U.S. military's massive public relations activities. The broadcast infuriated some members of Congress, who opened an investigation into the network’s news gathering practices for the program. Stanton was called to testify under oath before several House committees. He could not decline the force of the subpoenas that made this invitation much more than a friendly invitation to appear.
But unlike today, CBS held its ground then, with Stanton facing the risk of going to jail for contempt of Congress if he did not comply with the request for internal CBS News notes and outtakes for government officials to pore over.
For Stanton, this was a line that he would not cross, clearly placing both his company — which held valuable broadcast television and radio licenses — and himself in serious jeopardy.
During the hearings, Stanton spoke eloquently about broadcast journalism's rights. "Clearly, the compulsory production of evidence for a congressional investigation of this nature abridges the freedom of the press," he said. "The chilling effect of both the subpoena and the inquiry itself is plain beyond all question. If newsmen are told that their notes, films, and tapes will be subject to compulsory process so that the government can determine whether the news has been satisfactorily edited, the scope, nature, and vigor of their newsgathering and reporting activities will inevitably be curtailed ... a fundamental principle of a free society is at stake."
Three House committees voted to hold Stanton in contempt, but the full House voted against sending him to jail, by a vote of 226 to 181. The investigation ended with a whimper, not a bang, and Stanton received widespread recognition as the conscience of broadcasting.
The current FCC investigation of CBS News likely is just the start of a new FCC effort under the Trump administration to threaten government intervention. ABC News has already been added to the mix of “news distortion” cases that the FCC now is pursuing, based on a complaint that claims fact-checking by the moderators in a pre-election Harris-Trump TV debate aired by that network favored Harris.
Frank Stanton’s actions and eloquence in maintaining the essential firewall between government and the press should not just be a wonderful memory of a time “long ago in a galaxy far, far way.” Rather, they represent an essential commitment to enduring constitutional values that must be restored if we truly are to Make America Great Again.
Stuart N. Brotman is Digital Media Laureate and Distinguished Senior Fellow at The Media Institute. He is the author of “The First Amendment Lives On.”
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