White House Call Out NBC For “Deceitful” Editing Of Bush Interview

May 19, 2008 · Filed Under Liberal Bias, Media, President Bush

For some reason President Bush decided to give an interview to a network that literally hates his guts. Not surprisingly, his interview on NBC with left-wing correspondent Richard Engel was edited in a dishonest and deceitful way.

The White House on Monday sent a scathing letter to NBC News, accusing the news network of “deceptively” editing an interview with President Bush on the issue of appeasement and Iran.

At issue were remarks Bush made in front of Israel’s parliament earlier this week.

Specifically, White House counselor Ed Gillespie laments that the network edited the interview in a way that “is clearly intended to give viewers the impression that [Bush] agreed with [correspondent Richard Engel's] characterization of his remarks when he explicitly challenged it.

“This deceitful editing to further a media-manufactured storyline is utterly misleading and irresponsible and I hereby request in the interest of fairness and accuracy that the network air the President’s responses to both initial questions in full on the two programs that used the excerpts,” said Gillespie in the letter to NBC News President Steve Capus.

Gillespie’s letter didn’t stop there, he also ripped into NBC for its dishonest coverage of the Iraq war on that network and on its cable news network, MSNBC.

Gillespie used the opportunity to also inquire whether NBC News still believes that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war. In November 2006, the network decided to label the infighting in the country a “civil war.”

“I noticed that around September of 2007, your network quietly stopped referring to conditions in Iraq as a ‘civil war,’ ” Gillespie wrote. “Is it still NBC News’s carefully deliberated opinion that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war? If not, will the network publicly declare that the civil war has ended, or that it was wrong to declare it in the first place?”

Finally, Gillespie got in a parting shot at the network for increasingly blurring the lines between its hard news coverage, and far-left opinion shows.

“I’m sure you don’t want people to conclude that there is really no distinction between the ‘news’ as reported on NBC and the ‘opinion’ as reported on MSNBC, despite the increasing blurring of those lines,” Gillespie concluded. “I welcome your response to this letter, and hope it is one that reassures your broadcast network’s viewers that blatantly partisan talk show hosts like Christopher Matthews and Keith Olbermann at MSNBC don’t hold editorial sway over the NBC network news division.”

I cannot imagine what possessed President Bush to agree to an interview with a known left-wing hack like Richard Engel. MSNBC is the most outrageously dishonest cable news channel in the history of cable news. NBC has begun to align itself more and more with the far-left garbage that MSNBC spews.

So it’s not at all shocking that President Bush’s interview was dishonestly edited. That’s standard operating procedure for the thugs at NBC.

It’s unprecedented the way MSNBC has been allowed to blur the lines in their news coverage. Keith Olbermann literally calls President Bush a liar, and a war criminal on his show “Countdown”, then they cut to commercial and return with Olbermann hosting live “non-partisan” coverage of the election results.

People are supposed to rely on unbiased coverage from a guy who five minutes previous was talking about hating Republicans and calling Bush a war criminal to deliver fair and balanced election coverage?

Let’s also not forget about Olbermann’s sidekick Chris Mathews who likes to talk about the “funny feeling” that runs up his leg when Obama gives a speech.