CBS Aires Edited Interview of McCain with Katie Couric?
John McCain Iraq surge blunder. Why did CBS air a heavily edited interview of John McCain with Katie Couric?
Part One…
—
Part Two…
—
From America Blog…
This one is hard to even explain, it’s so bizarre. McCain, looking just awful on camera, made yet another major gaffe about national security policy, on CBS. So what did Katie Couric do? She aired the interview with McCain, aired the question that led to the gaffe, and then inserted an “answer” to the question that wasn’t the real gaffe-filled answer - it was something McCain said in a total other part of the interview. It’s absolutely astounding how far the corporate media is willing to go in order to defend John McCain. And seriously, take a good look at McCain in this video, I was kind of shocked by his appearance - he doesn’t look well at all.
From A Long Tough Blog…
This is ugly. Katie Couric asks John McCain a question - and she and/or her producers air his answer to another question. Because his actual answer was so embarrassingly wrong. That her firing hasn’t been announced already shows us how bad off we are.
From Crooks and Liars…
As I reported earlier, CBS violated their own Standards when it aired the heavily edited interview of John McCain with Katie Couric. A CBS spokesman tried to defend their behavior and told TV Newser:
Of the 14-minute interview, a little less than three minutes was used on the Evening News. A CBS spokesperson tells TVNewser, “As all news organizations do with extended interviews, last night’s Obama and McCain interviews were edited to fit the available time and to give viewers a fair expression of the candidates’ major differences. The full transcript and video were and still are available at CBSNews.com.”
OK, so this person is saying that they edited these segments to ‘ give viewers a fair expression of the candidates’ major differences’.
I’m sorry that is not what CBS did in this case and maybe the spokesman should look at their own standards in editing and then get back to me.
From Media Matters…
On the July 22 edition of the CBS Evening News, while airing portions of an interview she conducted that day with Sen. John McCain, anchor Katie Couric removed a part of his response in which he falsely asserted that the 2007 U.S. troop surge “began the Anbar awakening.” In fact, the so-called Anbar awakening reportedly began in September 2006, months before the surge was even announced. Couric had asked McCain, “Senator [Barack] Obama says while the increased number of U.S. troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shia government going after militias, and says that there might have been improved security even without the surge. What’s your response to that?” But rather than airing McCain’s direct reply, including the false claim that the surge “began the Anbar awakening” — an agreement by some tribal leaders in western Iraq to accept U.S. aid and cooperate with anti-Al Qaeda operations — Couric aired comments by McCain spliced together from three separate statements he gave during the interview, one of which responded to a different question. Couric gave no indication that these comments had been edited in any manner, nor did she otherwise note McCain’s falsehood.
So…Why would CBS edit this interview with John McCain? How do we know this is the only time they have done something like this? What do you think?
