CBS’s duplicitous editing and airing of its recent interview with Vice President and Democrat Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris has prompted a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) complaint.

On October 16, the Center for American Rights, a public interest law firm, filed a complaint urging the FCC to compel CBS to release the full transcript of its recent interview with Vice President and Democrat Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris.

The controversy erupted when CBS changed Harris’s answer to a question it aired, as NewsBusters explained in an October 9 report:

“Brian Flood and David Rutz at FoxNews.com reported that CBS aired two different answers to the same question on Israel in its 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. First they aired a word-salad answer on Sunday’s Face the Nation. But when the interview aired on Monday night, the answer was entirely different.”

CBS’s conflicting portrayals of Harris’s answer have raised widespread suspicion that the network changed the portion of her response it aired in order to influence November’s election by shielding her from criticism.

“The Center for American Rights (CAR) has filed a formal complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) against WCBS-TV, a CBS-owned station, for engaging in significant and intentional news distortion,” CAR announced in a press release.

“Rigging or slanting the news is a most heinous act against the public interest -- indeed, there is no act more harmful to the public’s ability to handle its affairs,” the complaint says:

“This complaint concerns an act of significant and substantial news alteration, made in the middle of a heated presidential campaign. Moreover, in this instance we have the clear external evidence of outtakes necessary for this Commission to act.”

“CBS crosses a line when its production reaches the point of so transforming an interviewee’s answer that it is a fundamentally different answer. This CBS may not do,” the complaint says, citing FCC precedent.”

“News distortion is incorporated in the public-interest standard for broadcasters, 47 U.S.C. § 309(a),” the complaint explains, noting that the FCC has been enforcing its policy against news distortion for more than a half-century.

CBS has released full transcripts in the past when its aired content has drawn scrutiny, so its refusal to do so now, despite requests from CAR and others, is even more reason for the FCC to act, the complaint concludes.

The American public widely supports CAR’s cause. As CNSNews has reported, 85% registered voters - including 87% of Democrats, 88% of Republicans, and 80% of Independents/Others - say CBS should release the full transcript of its interview with Kamala Harris.

“With Kamala Harris edit, CBS has gone full ‘fake news’ — GOP, time to boycott,” Media Research Center President Brent Bozell urged Tuesday in a New York Post op-ed.

The FCC has not provided an official response to the complaint, CAR confirmed to CNSNews on Wednesday.