The Media Research Center’s Jorge Bonilla wrote in a Feb. 18 post:
Interviews, especially those of candidates and elected officials with their ability to filibuster and avoid answering questions, are often edited for brevity and clarity so as to accommodate production demands. But then there are those interviews that, upon further review, leave one with no other conclusion that they were edited in order to spare the interviewer further embarrassment. Such is the case of Senator Tim Scott’s (R-SC) appearance on CBS’s Face The Nation.
An example of such editing is Sen. Scott’s response when asked about Nikki Haley’s son’s characterization of him as “Judas”. Compare what made it to air with what got cut out, which is the decolorized of the video below and bold portion of its transcript (click “expand”):
[…]In this case it is notable, but not at all surprising, that CBS chose to air only the politics portion of Scott’s response to being called “Judas”, but not the Christian forgiveness portion with its appropriate Biblical citation. Consider that the network that about a year ago had no compunction airing Sam Smith’s degenerate and satanic-adjacent performance of “Unholy” on the Grammys thinks “love thy enemy” is unfit for broadcast.
[…]Overall, the transcripts show that Costa was schooled at each and every turn. It wasn’t the interview that was edited for clarity and brevity, but CBS’s embarrassment.
Of course, Bonilla is simply reading his right-wing anti-media bias into the edits and has no evidence whatsoever that the edits were done because Costa was being “schooled.”
By contrast, neither Bonilla nor anyone else at the MRC offered any complaints about edited interviews in right-wing media. We recently highlighted how Newsmax got caught editing interviews, at least in part on the orders of CEO Christopher Ruddy — including an interview with Republican Sen. Mike Lee in which comments about Ukraine were edited out because Ruddy has been a huge supporter of Ukraine. And unlike CBS, Newsmax has apparently not made the edited portions of the interviews available on its website.
Then again, Newsmax has granted the MRC regular appearances on its TV shows in which its talking heads repeat their employer’s anti-media talking points du jour — appearances in which guests holding a different viewpoint have been forbidden from talking part. The MRC is never going to bite the hand that feeds it by holding it to the same scrutiny it imposes on non-right-wing outlets.