CBS News’ ‘60 Minutes’ Faces Formal Complaint for ‘Hit Piece’ Featuring Catholic Leaders Criticizing Trump With No Opposing Voices

CBS News is again facing criticism over a “one-sided,” anti-Trump segment on “60 Minutes,” this time over last Sunday’s segment that featured Catholic leaders criticizing President Trump’s war in Iran, with no opposing voices.Last summer, as Skydance Media was waiting for the Trump Administration to approve its acquisition of CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, lawyers for Skydance promised that CBS News would produce fair journalism that reflected a diversity of views across America and install an ombudsman to “evaluate complaints of bias.” But since the merger was approved, CBS News has continued a series of aggressively anti-Trump segments that it began last spring. Many of these segments featured only anti-Trump voices.On Sunday, after the conclusion of the Masters Tournament, which provided a large lead-in audience, “60 Minutes” aired a segment about what it said was the Catholic Church’s opposition to Mr. Trump’s war against Iran. However, a conservative law firm, the Center for American Rights, says the segment was a “hit piece.” The correspondent behind the story, Norah O’Donnell, interviewed the archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Washington, Robert McElroy, and the archbishop of Newark, Joseph Tobin. Cardinal McElroy told Ms. O’Donnell that under Catholic doctrine, the operation in Iran is “not a just war.”“The Catholic faith teaches us there are certain prerequisites for a just war. You can’t go for a variety of different aims. You have to have a focused aim, which is to restore justice and restore peace. That’s it,” he said.While he said the Iranian regime is “abominable,” he added, “This is a war of choice that we went to, and I think it’s embedded in a wider moment in the United States that’s worrying, which is this: We’re seeing before us the possibility of war after war after war.”Cardinal Cupich, meanwhile, chimed in to criticize the White House’s social media strategy of sharing memes about the war and said the administration was “turning the suffering of people and the killing of children and our own soldiers into entertainment.”The CAR took issue with CBS News for not interviewing members of the Trump Administration or a priest who was favorable to the administration.In a letter to CBS News’s ombudsman, Kenneth Weinstein, which was also sent to the FCC, the CAR said, “Skydance promised the FCC ‘reporting [that] is fair, unbiased, and fact based.’ The ‘60 Minutes’ segment on Catholics and politics this weekend failed to live up to the journalistic values that are supposed to define the new CBS News.”The letter, dated April 14, noted that the “60 Minutes” segment aired after the Masters, when the program “most benefits from carry-over viewership.”“CBS leveraged that large audience with a 13-minute segment with Norah O’Donnell, featuring three cardinals criticizing the president’s policies on Iran and immigration,” the letter said. “The one-sided report did not include any viewpoints other than the three cardinals and a fourth president also favorable to immigration. O’Donnell could have interviewed Cardinal Timothy Dolan or Bishop Robert Barron, both of whom serve on the president’s religious liberty commission, or a Catholic scholar of just war theory like papal biographer George Weigel or Professor J. Budziszewski. She didn’t.”The CAR said the story was “neither fair nor unbiased” and argued it was a “one-sided hit piece delivered on a high ratings show at the same time as other efforts to push Catholic voters in a particular direction.”‘60 Minutes,’ which is 57 years old, has traditionally been strongly opinionated in its segments and does not always include a diversity of views. Over the last year, the program has interviewed several Biden Administration officials and other Trump critics without also interviewing dissenting voices. A longtime “60 Minutes” practice is to demand that the subject being criticized sit for a sit-down interview or else “60 Minutes” won’t even read a statement from the subject defending themselves. Many conservatives will not submit to a sit-down, since in their view, the classic “60 Minutes” style is to theatrically treat the interviewee as a hostile witness, and then edit the video in a manner unflattering to the interview subject.This issue surfaced last year, when CBS News’s new management temporarily withheld a “60 Minutes” segment about the Trump Administration’s immigration policy due to concerns that it did not include interviews with the individuals behind the policy or statements from the administration. While Mr. Weinstein is supposed to review complaints of bias, he does not have the unilateral authority to make changes at the network. A far-left media reporter, Oliver Darcy, explained in his Status newsletter that Mr. Weinstein would have to bring the complaint to the president of Paramount and the head of CBS. If the three agree on the validity of the complaint, it would be up to the president of CBS News, Tom Cibrowski, to implement corrective action. Over the past several decades, “60 Minutes” has operated largely independent of CBS News management, and when there’s a standoff between the two sides, “60 Minutes” usually wins. It is unclear whether the FCC will take action on the complaint. The Trump-appointed chairman of the agency, Brendan Carr, recently praised CBS News’s new owners. During an interview on CNBC earlier this week, he said, “I’m pleased with some of the changes we’re seeing at CBS. I mean, nothing’s going to be exactly the way I personally would want it, and that’s fine. But, I do think they’re trying something different … I’m glad they’re doing something different, at least around the edges.”The complaint comes as Skydance is hoping to acquire CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, which will require the Trump Administration’s approval. While Mr. Trump has previously expressed frustration that, in his view, CBS News “has treated me far worse since the so-called ‘takeover,’” most media insiders predict that ongoing complaints of bias will not derail the deal. The Ellison family, which controls Skydance, is aligned with Mr. Trump. And next week, the CEO of Skydance, David Ellison, is set to hold a party “honoring” the Trump Administration. CBS News did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication.

CBS News’ ‘60 Minutes’ Faces Formal Complaint for ‘Hit Piece’ Featuring Catholic Leaders Criticizing Trump With No Opposing Voices

CBS News’ ‘60 Minutes’ Faces Formal Complaint for ‘Hit Piece’ Featuring Catholic Leaders Criticizing Trump With No Opposing Voices

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