White House criticizes NBC News' editing of Bush interview

by Dave Keating | May 20, 2008 at 03:33 am | 194 views | add comment

KO on the White House Complaint of NBC News

The White House has accused NBC News of 'deceitful' editing for the below cut, when president Bush was answerign a question from NBC reporter Richard Engel. The question concerned whether or not he was referring to Barack Obama with his comments about appeasement.

As it appeared on “Nightly News” on Sunday and the “Today” show#24696422 on Monday, Bush's response was: "You know, my policies haven't changed, but evidently the political calendar has. . . . And when, you know, a leader of Iran says that they want to destroy Israel, you've got to take those words seriously."

NBC deleted the following passage between those sentences: "People need to read the speech. You didn't get it exactly right, either. What I said was that we need to take the words of people seriously."

Bush counsel Ed Gillespie, in a letter to NBC, said that "this deceitful editing to further a media-manufactured story line is utterly misleading and irresponsible."

The unedited Bush interview#24696309 is on the network's website, NBC noted, saying the reporting accurately reflected the interview.

Gillespie said: "It's simply absurd for people to have to log onto the Internet and stream video to get accurate information from NBC News."

However media analysts were puzzled by the accusation, nothing that the omitted sentence contains no new information and doesn't alter content of what is being said. In fact, it is merely a repetition of the sentence that comes after which they included. Such editing is not unusual, and has been reaffirmed as legal and fair by courts time and time again, in cases where such an edit does not materially change the content of what was being said.

Bizarely, the white house accusation may have more to do with an ongoing feud between Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and MSNBC host Keith Olbermann. As was detailed this week in the New York Times, Fox News threatened NBC and its parent company General Electric with 'retaliation' if they didn't stop Olbermann from criticizing Bill O'Reilly. NBC refused, and Fox began a cluster of coverage criticising GE's business dealings with Iran and accusing NBC political reporter Richard Engel of having an anti-Bush bias. The white house allegation feeds directly into this storyline. Details of teh feud below from Reuters:

Bill O'Reilly, who hosts a show on U.S. news channel Fox News, is mounting an "extraordinary televised assault" on Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric, the Washington Post reported on its Web site on Monday.
On the surface, O'Reilly's charges revolve around GE's history of doing business with Iran, the newspaper reported.

But the attacks grow out of "an increasingly bitter feud between O'Reilly and the company's high-profile subsidiary, NBC," it said.

A spokeswoman for Fox News, a unit of News Corp, declined comment.

GE said it put out a statement on its website in April saying that GE and its board decided in 2005 that it would no longer do business in Iran because of developing conditions in that country and concerns expressed by shareholders.

However GE didn't retailiate until Fox News started going after NBC correspondent Richard Engel, when the network started accusing him of taking an anti-war stance in his Iraq reporting. NBC News president Steve Capus then stepped in, saying “It is one thing to have corporate joustingbetween Keith and O’Reilly. When it becomes anover-the-top, inaccurate distortion and gross misrepresentation of thejob being performed by Richard Engel, then I’m going to be concernedand feel the need to act.”

The idea that the white house is attempting to take advantage of a silly media feud may seem hard to swallow, but it is hard to understand their accusation in a legitimate context. It is clear that the removed sentence doesn't materially change the point he's making.