Majority think CBS should release Harris’s ’60 Minutes’ transcript

A majority of Americans believe CBS should release a full transcript of its recent “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Harris and think the network edited it to cast her in a favorable light, according to new polling.

A total of 85 percent of respondents in a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll indicated they wish to see CBS release a transcript of the full conversation between journalist Bill Whitaker and Harris.

Critics of both Harris and the mainstream news media, including former President Trump, have accused the network of selectively editing the Oct. 7 interview to make Harris look more favorable.

The network, on the night the interview aired on “60 Minutes,” published a transcript of the broadcast in full.

But critics pointed to an answer Harris gave to a question about the war in Gaza that was not included in the full broadcast and instead published by the outlet online.

“It’s an overwhelming finding that CBS should release the full transcript of their interview with Harris,” said Mark Penn, the poll’s co-director. “Failing to do so raises credibility issues with them.”

CBS News did not offer further comment.

It is standard practice for broadcast outlets to edit questions and answers during interviews with major newsmakers for clarity, accuracy and time.

Still, a majority, 53 percent, of respondents to the Harris poll said they feel CBS edited the interview to make the vice president look better.

The accusations of bias come after Trump initially agreed to participate in a similar “60 Minutes” interview, as every presidential candidate has done for decades, but backed out after the network said it would fact-check him during its broadcast.

Harris and her allies, at the same time, have been pressing Trump to release an updated medical report and meet her on a debate stage for a second time, an offer the former president has rejected citing early voting in some states.

The survey was conducted from Oct. 11 to Oct. 13 among 3,145 registered voters by the Harris Poll and HarrisX; the poll includes 2,596 likely voters and 898 battleground state voters. It is a collaboration between the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and the Harris Poll. The margin of error for the total sample is plus or minus 1.8 percentage points.

Results were weighted for age within gender, region, race/ethnicity, marital status, household size, income, employment, education, political party and political ideology where necessary to align them with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.

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