Fact Checking The 60 Minutes Public Lands Episode

Can TV journalism survive a rightwing takeover?

Last week, 60 Minutes aired a segment about the great public land heist. It was part of one of the first episodes produced following the takeover of CBS by the Ellison family, and their installation of rightwing propagandist Bari Weiss as that network’s “Editor-in-Chief.” Public lands and journalism are two topics I care about deeply. Let’s see how that segment holds up.

CBS accompanied the segment with a separate article that you can read at this link, while a direct transcription of the video is available at this link. I’m going to draw from both for this fact check. I’m also going to quote Representative Ryan Zinke (R-Santa Barbara) directly, from the quotes CBS retained in its edit.

60 Minutes: “So this year, when Washington, D.C., politicians suggested selling off public lands for development as part of the so-called ‘big beautiful’ budget bill, Montanans of all political stripes stood in opposition.”

Reality: While the sell off was broadly opposed amongst Montana’s citizens, our political representatives in Congress helped plan it. Before the measure caught the public’s imagination, and resulted in that sweeping disapproval, Steve Daines, our senior Senator, had one of his staff leak this claim to The New York Times:

“Jordan Roberts, a spokesperson for the committee, said Mr. Lee had ‘worked closely’ with Senator Steve Daines, Republican of Montana, to ‘incorporate key feedback, including ensuring a transparent public process.’”

60 Minutes: “The federal government owns and manages about 640 million acres of American land, most of it in the West and Alaska. In some states, such as Nevada, the vast majority of the territory is federally owned. As the nation expanded in the 1800s — and as Native Americans were forcefully removed — some land was settled by homesteaders or sold to industrialists, but much fell into federal hands. Today, that land is home to the national parks most of us are familiar with, but also vast tracts set aside for conservation, recreation, plus moneymakers like ranching, mining and logging.”

Reality: This is close! While it’s tempting to begin the narrative about public lands after the Louisiana Purchase, the Mexican-American War, or the Homestead Act, they actually date back to the very beginning. The concept of federally-managed lands owned by the American public originates in the very compromise that made ratification of the Constitution possible. Before then, the various royal charters that established the original colonies defined vague, often-overlapping borders between them that stretched as far west as the Pacific Ocean. James Madison negotiated an agreement between the colonies to cede lands west of the Appalachian Mountains to the American people, thus creating the first 13 states we’re all familiar with now.

60 Minutes: “In Montana, selling public land was perceived as an attack on a way of life already under stress. In recent years, the moneyed class has descended – westward-ho! Exclusive enclaves like the Yellowstone Club — studded with eight-figure residencs — have been proliferating. In the last five years alone, home prices in the state have vaulted nearly 70 percent.”

Reality: This begins to point to a larger truth. There’s bad outcomes for public lands beyond a sell-off. Focussing on that single, simply-communicated act belies talk of more nuanced policies that can, in some cases, add up to the same effect. For example, Daines helped negotiate a land swap between the Forest Service and private land owners that has closed off essentially all public access to a broad swath of the Crazy Mountains so that very same Yellowstone Club can construct a private ski resort there. No land was sold, but most of an entire mountain range has still been privatized.

Daines, who was first elected to the Senate in 2014 following a Supreme Court ruling that applied Citizens United’s allowance for dark money in elections to Montana, has also dedicated his career in Washington to destroying Montana’s Wilderness Study Areas, so they can be opened up for oil, gas, and timber extraction. The state relies on those nine WSAs, which were created by Senator Lee Metcalf in 1977, as a well of biodiversity that supports our abundant wildlife populations.

60 Minutes: “The Trump administration, including Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, has made it clear that federal lands could be generating more value if there were better management, fewer regulations and more vigorous extraction.”

Reality: While that might be their claim, it is not backed by their actions. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which all of Montana’s legislators voted for, includes a measure that reduces royalty rates paid into federal coffers by oil and gas operations on public lands from 16.67 to 12.5 percent percent. That’s far below market rates, and reduces the value generated on public lands for the American public. Texas, for instance, charges 25 percent.

And, soon after, Daines led a successful effort to entirely break the permitting process across our nation’s public lands system, putting every oil and gas lease that’s part of a resource management plan written since 1996 in legal jeopardy. That mess will take years and likely billions of dollars in legal expenses to sort out. It’s just one more reason why American oil producers are abandoning operations on American soil in favor of foreign investments.

60 Minutes: “When Utah Sen. Mike Lee went further, proposing the sale of as much as 3 million acres of federally owned land across the West earlier this year, it was the first serious effort of its kind in more than four decades.”

Reality: In 2017, Utah Congressperson Jason Chaffetz proposed the sale of 3.3 million acres of public land. The same total Lee and Daines attempted to insert into the reconciliation package. That measure was also defeated by overwhelming pressure from the public. Pretending that this isn’t recent history avoids holding the Republican party accountable for what’s been a concerted assault on our nation’s unique system of uniquely egalitarian public lands for at least the last decade.

60 Minutes: “…[Lee] and some Republican colleagues reasoned that selling land would address America’s housing shortage and also help pay down the nation’s debt.”

Reality: Lee’s stated purposes was the easily-disproven lie that this was about creating affordable housing. Talk of using proceeds from land sales to address the debt is part of a separate conversation that originated with interior secretary Burgum’s confirmation hearing in January. That’s an important distinction because it would take a lot more land than Lee proposed selling to begin to address federal debt, which currently stands at over $38 trillion.

60 Minutes: “…you have zero political future in [Montana] unless you oppose the—the sale of public lands.”

Reality: This is an important point. Montana citizens have rallied around the protection of public lands more than in any other state. But, even here, support begins to fall off once you introduce nuance. Talk about a land sale to a layperson, and they’ll know exactly what you’re talking about. Mention Daines’ land swap in the Crazies, and you’ll need to be talking to someone reasonably well-informed in order to find awareness.

Ryan Zinke: “Public lands is not, to me, on a balance sheet.”

Reality: In 2017, while serving as Secretary of the Interior, Zinke ordered that Bears Ears National Monument be reduced from 1.35 million to 228,000 acres, and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument be reduced from 1.9 million to 997,490 acres. This was the largest reduction in public land protections in American history and Zinke ordered it specifically to benefit the balance sheets of the uranium mining, oil and gas drilling, and coal extraction industries.

Ryan Zinke: “You could sell the entirety of the federal estate, it’s not going to get you out of debt.”

Reality: During his confirmation hearing Secretary Burgum pegged the value of all public lands in America at approximately $200 trillion. He later followed up with clarification that he’d like to use that as an asset to borrow against, not sell off. That is not better. Should the government default on debt, that could leave public lands open to collection measures by lenders, which would almost certainly be foreign entities.

60 Minutes: “[Stinky Zinke] worked hard to get the measure killed in the House and Senate even after Montana was afforded a special exemption from any sales.”

Reality: Zinke does not serve on the House Natural Resources Committee, which killed its own proposal to sell lands before it reached the House floor, where Zinke would have been able to cast a vote for or against it. Zinke is generally disliked by his colleagues, especially those in the upper chamber, and his vote was at no point necessary for the passage of the reconciliation bill. He holds virtually no leverage to influence any vote, any way, in either chamber of Congress. All he did was issue a press release after the fact claiming credit.

60 Minutes: “Zinke was instrumental in getting the land sale proposal killed in the House. He then coordinated with his colleagues in the Senate, where Mike Lee had crafted a special carve out exempting Montana. But that didn’t win over the state’s delegation.”

Reality: Again, Zinke had nothing to do with anything beyond grandstanding. Exempting Montana from land sales was, in the most generous possible interpretation, an attempt by Lee to win Daines over. In the most cynical possible interpretation it was an attempt by Daines to pursue re-election in his adopted state, while screwing over the rest of the American public. No one knows which except for those two Senators and their staff.

60 Minutes: “Perhaps more than any other state, Montana stood in the breach, thwarting the sale efforts.”

Reality: Both of Montana’s Congresspersons and both of our Senators are currently Republicans, as is our Governor. None of them publicly opposed the sell-off. None of them made any public vote against the sell-off. All of them have stated, only after the fact, that they oppose sell-off efforts. All of them voted for the reconciliation bill, which is wreaking senseless harm on public lands both nationwide, and here at home in Montana. All of them voted to use the Congressional Review Act to break the public lands permitting process, also harming industrial operations on public lands.

60 Minutes: “Still, there’s widespread expectation this issue will come up again in Congress.”

Reality: There’s really not. What we are seeing is an effort by the administration to privatize operations on public lands, including in national parks. And, potentially, the loss of hundreds of national park sites nationwide (it’s unclear if that will look like a formal sale, or a transfer of ownership to private entities or state governments, which amounts to much the same thing). The vote on the budget that will achieve that is coming at the end of January. It will be telling to see who will vote for what at that time, and how that will align with their current messaging.

The Takeaway: Republican politicians are engaged in an effort to rewrite recent history by overstating, misrepresenting, or outright lying about their involvement in the effort to sell off millions of acres of public lands as part of the reconciliation bill, while minimizing the very real harms the version of that bill that passed into law is causing to public lands, and the industries and interests that rely on them. Two of the main villains here are Ryan Zinke (who again ordered the largest reduction of public lands protections…ever) and Steve Daines (who co-authored the sell off package with Lee). Both of those guys are facing difficult reelections in next year’s mid-terms. Both are propped up by out-of-state dark money, both refuse to meet with any actual voters, and both are desperately unpopular.

Until the acquisition of CBS and the installation of Weiss, 60 Minutes stood as a bastion of impartial, long-form, investigative journalism being done at the highest possible level. This segment had the opportunity to break through Republican disinformation, ask tough questions, and highlight both who was responsible for the sell-off attempt, and the ways in which public lands are still experiencing unprecedented harm, even if the American public still owns them. Expressly because the public owns them, this was an important opportunity to get to the truth. But the show instead pitched softballs, and played into a very transparent attempt at spreading disinformation. This is about as disappointing an indication for the future of impartial, in-depth reporting at CBS as is possible. And in an environment where media outlets like 60 Minutes are being dismantled, it’s also a very concerning indication about Republicans’ ability to get away with all this.

Top photo: CBS

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