It was one week ago when “60 Minutes” broadcast its interview with the election hopefuls and Democratic disasters Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. After an initial flurry of mockery last Sunday morning, with the release of some teaser clips from the Harris interview, it was then noticed once the Monday primetime broadcast was shown that there had been some significant alterations to the presentation. Namely, on not one but two instances, the answers given by Harris to interviewer Bill Whitaker’s questions had been altered.
The accusations as to why were flying almost instantly, and for good reason. The interview was conducted on October 5 and recorded, then edited. But once the ridicule emerged over how incompetent Harris sounded, by the October 7 broadcast, her answers to the same questions shown in those Sunday clips were completely different, meaning they had been edited a second time. It looks like clear manipulation on the part of CBS News, but David Bauder – the national media correspondent for the Associated Press – is here to straighten out the matter for those of us not media savvy.
In a piece that could be sub-headed, “Why You Normies Just Don’t Get It,” Bauder invokes “Trump’s Complaints” in the headline to justify his defense of the “60 Minutes” hatchet job on its interview. He opens by rehashing that Trump ducked out of the same interview broadcast, before getting to the generalities of the issue. He sets it up as a premise that we, the common folk, cannot grasp.
For CBS News, it was considered part of the typical editing and cross-promotion process that takes place for a big interview. Yet to those unfamiliar with journalism and television production, the effect can be jarring.
That Bauder thinks it is a good look to explain that a news network caught characterizing divergent responses by a presidential candidate as a “typical” practice is just the start of the problems. He then offers up the explanation for the differences that came from the production.