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| May 20, 2008 |
Volume 2, Number 3
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CNN SKIPS OWN TAPE TO PUSH
FALSE PARTISAN SHOT AT MCCAIN |
On the May 16 American Morning,
CNN permitted Clinton campaign advisor Jamie Rubin to slam
Republican John McCain as a "flip-flopper" and a "hypocrite," all
based on a tightly-edited 41-second video clip supplied by Rubin
himself. After summarizing McCain's recent jabs at Democrat Barack
Obama's Middle East policies, fill-in co-anchor Kyra Phillips
touted: "But there's word this morning that McCain hasn't actually
been consistent in his opposition to [the Palestinian terrorist
group] Hamas." [Audio/video (1:56):
Windows Media (7.14 MB) and
MP3 Audio (539 kB)]CNN then showed the edited clip of Rubin's January 28, 2006 SkyNews
interview with McCain, in which he seemed to suggest dealing with
Hamas without preconditions. In a six-minute interview with
Phillips, Rubin blasted McCain's supposed change in positions as
"the ultimate flip-flop in American politics" and "the height of
hypocrisy." No Republican appeared to balance Rubin, and Phillips
never indicated whether CNN even sought a response from McCain.
But CNN could easily have checked for themselves — the network
interviewed McCain the exact same day he spoke to Rubin. At the
time, CNN reporter Elaine Quijano said McCain was taking a hard
line: "One prominent senator says it's an untenable position to have
a government in the Middle East led by a group committed to the
destruction of its neighbor, Israel." Then a clip of McCain:
"Hopefully, that Hamas, now that they are going to govern, will be
motivated to renounce this commitment to the extinction of the state
of Israel. Then we can do business again....It's very, very
important, though, that they renounce this commitment." [Audio/video
(0:35): Windows Media (2.09 MB) and
MP3 Audio (152 kB)]
Eleven hours later, CNN's Lou Dobbs discovered McCain had told Rubin
pretty much the same thing ("The U.S. should take a step back and
see what they do....Part of the relationship will be dictated by how
Hamas acts, not how the U.S. acts."), but that portion was removed
from the edited clip Rubin gave CNN that morning. "Well, that seems
certainly to...substantiate precisely what Senator McCain is
saying," Dobbs told reporter Dana Bash.
But for most of the day, CNN had trusted their partisan source and
ignored their own tape. How convenient for Democrats — and
disturbing for those hoping for fair and balanced campaign coverage
this year.
For more, see the
May 19
CyberAlert
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