At what point did Campbell Brown jump the shark to become the typical political hack? I guess its too much to expect that someone who starts off telling it like it is will continue to do so once they "make it" but I had high hopes for Campbell Brown after the way she reported during the election season. Now that she has her own show Brown is using the same deceptive reporting techniques that we have come to expect from the likes of Bill O'Reilly and other Faux Newsers, and that for me is very dissappointing. Bigger than that, the whole of CNN has seemed to take her lead and started reporting on the instance in the same dishonest way. I am speaking of course of PEOTUS Barack Obama's press conference introducing Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and his response to a question about it. When you look at the facts it is unambiguous that Ms. Brown and her cohorts are misrepresenting the facts of what happened and creating a controversy where non exists. My only question is WHO is going to call them out for this. Keith Olbermann I know you failed me on the whole "Name General Cafferey Worst Person in the World" thing, but how about making it up to us by calling out CNN instead?
First lets examine what Campbell Brown put out as the "truth".
So basically the thrust of Brown's argument is that Obama didn't give a substantive answer to reporters and dismissed the question as them just "having fun". Well certainly according to the video she showed if it ended at the point where she cut it off I could understand the outrage. But what was REALLY the full exchange?
Watch this.
For those who can't watch the video, here is the actual back and forth.
Peter Baker.
Q Thank you, Mr. President-elect.
You talked about the importance just now of having different voices and robust debate within your administration. But, again, going back to the campaign, you were asked and talked about the qualifications of the -- your now -- your nominee for secretary of State, and you belittled her travels around the world, equating it to having teas with foreign leaders; and your new White House counsel said that her resume was grossly exaggerated when it came to foreign policy.
I'm wondering whether you could talk about the evolution of your views of her credentials since the spring.
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: Look, I'm in -- I think this is fun for the press, to try to stir up whatever quotes were generated during the course of the campaign.
Q Your quotes, sir.
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: No, I understand. And I'm -- and you're having fun. (Laughs.)
Q I'm asking a question.
PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: But the -- and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not -- I'm not faulting it.
But look, I think if you look at the statements that Hillary Clinton and I have made outside of the -- the heat of a campaign, we share a view that America has to be safe and secure and in order to do that we have to combine military power with strengthened diplomacy. And we have to build and forge stronger alliances around the world, so that we're not carrying the burdens and these challenges by ourselves.
I believe that there's no more effective advocate than Hillary Clinton for that well-rounded view of how we advance American interests. She has served on the Armed Services Committee in the Senate. She knows world leaders around the world. I have had extensive discussions with her both pre-election and post-election about the strategic opportunities that exist out there to strengthen America's posture in the world.
And I think she is going to be a(n) outstanding secretary of State. And if I didn't believe that, I wouldn't have offered her the job. And if she didn't believe that I was equipped to lead this nation at such a difficult time, she would not have accepted. Okay?
So lets go by the numbers
- Obama did not dismiss the question, as a matter of fact he said "there's nothing wrong with that" and "I'm not faulting it"
- Obama acknowledged that outside of the rhetoric made in "the heat of the campaign" he and Hillary share a lot of the same core values.
- Obama went on to list all of the attributes in Hillary Clinton that he saw as making her a strong candidate for Secretary of State.
Now the question I have is why. Why if Campbell Brown wanted to take PEOTUS Barack Obama to task about his answer to the question didn't she show the full answer? Why would she be trying to paint PEOTUS Obama as dismissive if in fact he not only acknowledge the reporter's right to ask the question, he went on to fully answer it? These are questions that only Campbell Brown can answer definitively and I for one would like some answers. But bigger than that today when I turn on CNN to pass the time I see Wolf Blitzer and his motley crew including WingNut emeritus Jonah Goldberg again flogging the same bogus issue using Campbell Brown's edited video. And just an hour or two later here was Brown herself continuing to try to push the blatantly dishonest meme from almost a week ago I guess because nobody took it seriously when she first brought it up and rightly so. Now maybe Obama didn't get down on his hands and knees and beg everybody to forgive him for every bad thing he ever said about Hillary Clinton but some how I don't think any rational person expected him to. Perhaps the height off irony is that other "real" journalists actually recognized how unserious the questions asked of Obama really were. I suggest that maybe Campbell Brown should read this article from Joe Klein before she decides what questions PEOTUS Obama should or shouldn't be taking seriously even undere false pretenses. I could also point out her obvious double standard in contrast to how she has reported on George W. Bush but that would be almost like piling on.
CNN is doubling down on propaganda I guess in an effort to change over to a FOXNEWS business model where you lie to your audience enough that they don't trust the real news organizations because they aren't carrying the same bullshit lies that YOU are. I guess they took heart when Sean Hannity recently said that if you werent listening to wingnut radio or watching FoxNews then you were uninformed. Really I could care less what their motivation IS or ISN'T what I do care about is the growing gulf between reality and propaganda that we are presented with by our media outlets. Just this past week the NYTimes (not necessarily the bastion of truthiness) tried to cause a controversy for Senator Diane Feinstein by printing a part of her statement but ommitting the final sentence. Because the subject was ending the practice of torture which some critics call "enhanced interrogation techniques" they new it was a powder keg and yet they either were so sloppy in their reporting that they didn't double check to make sure that the full text of the statement was included OR they made a conscious decision to leave the sentence out because it pretty much destroyed the meme the article was trying to push in the first place. Again I will let the reader decide. This was the initial quote printed in the NYTimes in an article entitled After Sharp Words on C.I.A., Obama Faces a Delicate Task
Afterward, however, Mrs. Feinstein issued a statement saying: "The law must reflect a single clear standard across the government, and right now, the best choice appears to be the Army Field Manual. I recognize that there are other views, and I am willing to work with the new administration to consider them."
Here is the full quote
"The law must reflect a single, clear standard across the government, and right now the best choice appears to be the Army Field Manual," Senator Feinstein said. "I recognize that there are other views, and I am willing to work with the new Administration to consider them. However, my intent is to pass a law that effectively bans torture, complies with all laws and treaties, and provides a single standard across the government."
Now because of the incomplete quote resident McCainiac tire swinger Michael Scherer of TIME posted a blog entitled Interrogation Policy Still A Bit Shadowy Which led Glenn Greenwald to offer up a post entitled Why do Feinstein and Wyden sound much different on the torture issue now? But arent all those headlines couched in the meme that Diane Feinstein no longer intends to outlaw torture? And isn't this line "However, my intent is to pass a law that effectively bans torture, complies with all laws and treaties, and provides a single standard across the government" both state clearly her intention TO ban torture and at the same time refute the meme that she is back tracking? In fact doesn't the tone of the statement actually start to come off that she is willing to be convinced of a BETTER way of outlawing torture than the Army Field manual instead of back tracking about outlawing torture at all after you add in the last line? Maybe I am missing something but to me that line was pretty damn important to the statement as a whole. And if in fact someone thinks its not important the imagine if the first three two lines of her statement disappeared and the NYTimes printed only that one sentence. Would Scherer or Greenwald have anything to be upset about? I think not.
So this is take number two Mr. Olbermann. Will you take up my cause and name the CNN crew the "Worst People in the World" on Monday? I think I have made a clean cut case that they deserve it and perhaps if someone else in the media alls them out for their dishonesty it will discourage them from moving any closer to becoming FoxNews lite. Ill be watching.