Former CBS News correspondent Catherine Herridge has shared that the network torpedoed a potential interview with Elon Musk over concerns about what he might say.
During a recent episode of her podcast, Herridge revealed that at the height of the reporting surrounding how the Biden Administration pressured social media companies — especially Twitter — to suppress certain stories, she had lined up an interview with Elon Musk, who had recently purchased the company.
“I had conversations with some of the reporters connected to the Twitter Files, and I was in my head thinking that there might be an opportunity to tell that story on CBS News,” said Herridge. “We had a number of topics under discussion — they didn’t go as far as we had hoped — but at the end of the day, this opportunity to interview Elon Musk was developing.
“So I went to the CBS executives, and I said, ‘This is the opportunity that we have.’ He’s saying, ‘I want to do it live, and on my platform.’ He’s one of the most influential human beings on the planet,” continued Herridge. “And the reaction from the executives was, ‘Well, we can’t do it live.’ I was like, What do you mean we can’t do it live? ‘Well, we don’t know what he’s going to say.’ Isn’t that the point of journalism? You don’t know what the person’s going to say.”
She continued by saying that she didn’t understand the hesitation by the network.
“Everything just got shut down. It’s one of the biggest interviews you could ever have,” she said.
Catherine Herridge added that she never returned to Musk to discuss the stipulations put in place by CBS News.
“I felt so ashamed, frankly, that I never went back to Elon Musk and said, Listen, they want to do it, but they’ve set all these conditions on it. I couldn’t do that. This is someone whose DNA is free speech, and how do you tell someone who’s committed to free speech that your network can only do it taped and only if they edit it, and it can only be on their platform? I couldn’t go back to him with that.
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