New York: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is suing CBS TV network demanding $10 billion in damages alleging its “deceptive” editing of an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris was election interference.
The suit filed on Thursday in a federal court in Texas, alleges that CBS made the edits “to tip the scales in favour of the Democratic Party as the heated 2024 Presidential Election — which President Trump is leading approaches its conclusion.”
Trump’s legal team said, “To paper over Kamala’s ‘word salad’ weakness, CBS used its national platform on 60 Minutes to cross the line from the exercise of judgment in reporting to deceitful, deceptive manipulation of news”.
In a statement, CBS denied that the interview with Harris was doctored and said it would fight the case vigorously.
The dispute is over remarks Harris made about Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the interview with correspondent Bill Whitaker.
In a preview that was broadcast in the programme ‘Face the Nation’, she said, “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”.
But when the interview was broadcast the next day in an election special on the 60 Minutes programme which had been originally taped after she had been mocked for the lengthy remark that critics said had no substance, she was shown as saying, tersely, “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end”.
Trump and his allies allege that a fresh interview segment was made for that portion of the original interview and it was inserted.
He demanded a full transcript of the interview without any edits, but CBS refused to give it saying that it was protected under the Constitution’s First Amendment protecting the media’s rights.
–IANS
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