Friday, June 11, 2004

NBC Does the Twist


Last night while flipping channels, I came across the tail end of the Tom Brokaw interview with President Bush in Normandy, France. While Brokaw repeatedly tried to catch him in a gotcha moment, the President came across as thoughtful and gave well-reasoned answers. The interview was much better than the Meet the Press interview of a few months ago.

Since I had missed the beginning, I decided to go to the NBC site to see if the video was available. As I watched the video, I also read the transcript. Although it was not my intent, this allowed me to see what had been edited out of the video. I was not surprised to see that whole questions and answers had not been used in the video. However, I was surprised to see that important portions from the middle of some of the President's answers had been deleted out, in some cases removing points that helped the President present his side to the American people. Viewers of the video would have had no idea that the answers were shortened unless they had read along with the transcript as I had.

Go and read the whole thing.