The recent “editing” of an interview with President Bush to materially change the nature of the interview is a gross misuse of the fourth estate trust. I use fourth estate loosely as it should mean the journalistic profession or its members; the press taken from Dictionary.Com. To materially change an interview with the President on matters of foreign policy to achieve a slanted skewed agenda of the corpse of the formerly respected NBC News, and to intentionally mislead its viewers on the intent of and the actual response where the President told the reporter that the reporter’s premise was wrong and to leave this statement out of the President’s response – to change the interview to make it appear that the President agreed with the reporter, is unconscionable. Then after being asked by a key representative of the President to replay the entire interview, unedited, on the same venue where the edited version previously aired, NBC disregarded the request and only placed the unedited version on its web site. This is again outright and willful manipulation of the facts in a news story to steer public opinion and to support a specific political candidate.
We need to take this “news source” for what it is worth and doubt the veracity of any future reporting from this entity. If you wish to be intentionally misled, watch NBC and MSNBC, otherwise find a new source for your news. Some will say that it was MSNBC and not NBC, however when the players of the news division cross over from and to NBC and MSNBC as often as they do, both NBC and MSNBC can be considered as one and the same.
Added May 21, 2008:
I have read comments to the Huffington Post and other web sites where George Bush is less than popular. These posters seem to be comfortable with the edited interview, mostly because they do not like George Bush. The hatred of George Bush is blinding some of these folks to the real issue. It does not matter if the interviewee was George Bush, Millard Fillmore, or Barack Obama. When the President of the United States is interviewed and the interview is edited, the news source simply cannot edit meaningful dialogue. At the minimum, the news source should indicate that the interview was edited and list where the full interview can be found. A respected, responsible news source should do this. Not indicating that the interview was edited and deleting meaningful dialogue is the work of a opinion news source with the clear intent to mislead the viewer.
You have to be in reality that G. W. Bush is the
worst president in history and you still defend
him. Get a new job!!!
Ken, Excellent post! I am going to hunt down this interview after I am done here. It is really amazing how this medium has been taken as fact. After all it is driven by ratings and programing is derived from populous viewpoints, advertiser’s appeal, and even political sway. It is great to see people like yourself bringing to light the issues. As a firm believer in capitalism, I get excited when I see consumers and the market regulating instead of the government. Journalism has always prided itself as an unbiased source of facts. Keep them in check! Our nation was founded on a system of checks and balances of which we are critical cog and the markets work the same way.