During Obama Interview, 60 Minutes Prioritized Clinton Email Process Story Over U.S. Gun Violence

Gun Question Edited Out Of Televised Q&A

Special Programs Guns & Public Safety

Written by Eric Boehlert

Published

Sitting for a rare one-on-one network television interview with President Obama that aired on 60 Minutes this week, CBS' Steve Kroft repeatedly pressed Obama about Hillary Clinton's use of private email when she was secretary of state. But CBS was apparently far less interested in the pressing public policy issue of gun violence, which has dominated the news in recent weeks. It's also a topic Obama has been speaking out on publicly.

The interview seemed to be the latest example of the press giving the seven-month-old email story a disproportionate amount of time and attention.

The bulk of the 60 Minutes interview centered on the unfolding foreign policy challenges in Syria. In the second part of the lengthy 24-minute interview that aired, Kroft repeatedly pressed Obama about Clinton using a private email account years ago. In response, Obama said he agreed with Clinton's assessment that using a private email account was a mistake, and emphasized that it posed no national security risk and that the allegations against her were being “ginned up” by her political foes.

Still, Kroft again and again raised the topic with the president:

STEVE KROFT: Did you know about Hillary Clinton's use of private email server?

[...]

STEVE KROFT: Do you think it posed a national security problem?

[...]

STEVE KROFT: What was your reaction when you found out about it?

During the interview that aired Sunday night, Kroft pressed Obama six times about Clinton's emails.

No questions about gun violence made it into the portions of the interview CBS aired. But it turns out Kroft actually did actually raise the topic of gun violence with Obama during the Q&A, but 60 Minutes editors cut that portion out of the final TV interview. (Viewers can only see Obama and Kroft's exchange about gun violence online.)

In other words, the portion of the Q&A that focused on the well-worn process story of Clinton's emails was deemed by CBS to be far more newsworthy than Obama's discussion of gun violence, even though the interview came in the wake of several campus shootings this month.

And at no time when addressing the email issue did Kroft mention that Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) recently made headlines when he seemed to acknowledge that the Benghazi select committee, which is now focused almost exclusively on the email issue, was created in order to sabotage Clinton's White House run.