JONATHAN CHAIT AUGUST 1, 2011
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Andrew Breitbart has clipped an exchange from today's press at conference at the White House. In the exchange, reporter Norah O'Donnell press Jay Carney by asking, "Democrats are saying, 'You gave them everything they wanted and we got nothing." Commentary has picked up the story, giving it the headline, "CBS's O'Donnell to Carney: We got nothing."
CBS’s Norah O’Donnell peppered Carney with terse, accusatory questions about the lack of tax revenue (read: tax increases) in the debt ceiling deal. O’Donnell complained about how many GOP demands were met by the deal, and then said to Carney: “You gave them everything they wanted and we got nothing.” That “we” is very telling. ...
O’Donnell, meanwhile, may have to answer to her bosses at CBS for peeling back the veneer of impartiality to reveal the liberal advocacy sitting just beneath the surface of the mainstream networks.
Amazing. They simply lopped off the part where O'Donnell was describing the position of a party and passed it off as O'Donnell talking about herself and liberal Democrats in the first person plural.
After some reporters objected, Commentary updated the story to emphasize O'Donnell's "tone" as the issue, while editor John Podhoretz took to Twitter to defend the plainly misleading story. Here's the update emphasizing "tone":
Some readers are objecting that O’Donnell was relaying to Carney what liberals are saying about the deal. If you watch the whole clip, she asks a question before this statement that is clearly in her voice, not that of agitated liberals: “Two weeks ago the president talked about shared sacrifice, and he talked about ending subsidies for oil companies and he talked about ending tax breaks for corporate jet owners. He talked about that this was a very fair deal where he was offering three-to-one, spending cuts for one in tax revenues. Where are the tax revenues?” She then asks the question where her defenders insist she is quoting others. Watch the delivery of her question–it’s both hostile and dramatic, and was made only after questioning Carney along the same lines in which there is no contention that she is speaking for anyone other than herself. Viewers can decide.
First of all, the update fails to include the full quote, and fails to inform readers that the original story misleadingly truncated O'Donnell's question. It merely switches to a less damning accusation without acknowledging it's doing so.
Second, the new accusation is itself silly. Reporters ask questions from the perspective of politicians ("They're saying...") all the time. They ask question in an impassioned, loud or aggressive tone all the time. Making o'Donnell's tone an issue is a transparent attempt by Commentary to cover for the way it smeared her.
13 comments
I happen to think she was spitting back at Carney his use of the "we" and was not referring to herself. If a member of the media appears to have stake in a political outcome, it only damages their credibility. But on this we have one weird set of standards. We have legislators taking money from people whose matters they vote on. That's horrifying to me but it's perfectly okay with our system.
- Nusholtz
August 1, 2011 at 3:21pm
A media outlet that purposely cuts off a quote to make it sound like something it's not? Like this?: http://mije.org/health/tv-station-takes-four-year-old-childs-quote-context Naa, that doesn't really happen.
- tmmats
August 1, 2011 at 3:32pm
Thank you for the excellent post, Jonathan. There is a gentlemanly right, e.g., Conor Friedersdorf, Bruce Bartlett, David Frum, Julian Sanchez (actually, a libertarian) and there is the attack right, e.g., John Podhoretz, J-Ru. Andrew Breitbart, Michelle Malkin (my old coffee and lunch partner in the mid-1990s), Jonah Goldberg. Unfortunately, the former are drowned out by the latter.
- liberalref
August 1, 2011 at 3:36pm
Hey libref, as the Jacobins said, and I translate, "These are heady times."
- basman
August 1, 2011 at 3:44pm
p.s at this very moment my wife is in Seattle visiting her brother. I hope you're having better weather than I am in the hot, humid east.
- basman
August 1, 2011 at 3:48pm
Does anyone still take Breitbart seriously? Or John Podhoretz?
- arnon
August 1, 2011 at 4:04pm
I guess she should only ask questions that meet the PR objectives of Republican strategists and pundits? If you are a concerned viewer at home hoping to find out what the deal offers in terms of shared sacrifice and revenue increases, tough luck. Those aren't legitimate questions, and your need to know is non-existent.
- esmense
August 1, 2011 at 4:23pm
Quoting Andrew Breitbart, "....God damn America." libref, how did you ever manage the coffee? ugh.
- miceelf
August 1, 2011 at 4:42pm
"Hostile"? It looks like O'Donnell has committed the sin of not being a doormat. Good for her.
- whyamihere
August 1, 2011 at 7:20pm
Michelle Malkin was an entirely different person when I knew her, or so it seemed. Then, she was a libertarian-leaning conservative and, as a newspaper columnist for my hometown paper, she was fair-minded. She actually took on a Republican Party financier in one of her columns. This sort of behavior is what drew me to her. Now, she is an attack dog, a nativist, and she justly has an award named after her at Andrew Sullivan's blog, The Dish, for over-the-top statements that rightists' make. So she either became a nutter, or far more likely in my estimation, she saw a niche for herself as an Asian-American version of Ann Coulter. Bas, this has been a cool summer. Our flowers (those that my wife Sheena and I planted) are thriving, though. This week is supposed to actually be sunny and nice for several days in a row. I am sorry to hear that you are suffering from high humidity.
- liberalref
August 1, 2011 at 8:40pm
libref, people have said something similar about the development of ann coulter. Is this really all performance art?
- miceelf
August 2, 2011 at 7:57am
There wasn't an edit in here at all. Look at the original CBS video. There was less background noise. But you can clearly hear her saying the same thing in Brietbart's video, but the background noise and Carney's comments (which she was talking over) makes it harder to hear. Now, that said, the "some people say..." angle could be believed if she were routinely playing the side of upset tea-partier too. I don't think she has ever done that, however.
- seattleeng
August 2, 2011 at 3:46pm
I read a blog yesterday that captured the media's behavior quite accurately in this matter. When dealing with the right, the media insists on knowing "why aren't you willing to compromise?" And when dealing with the left, the media insists on knowing "why aren't you fighting harder?" Telling. Indeed.
- seattleeng
August 3, 2011 at 10:53am