NBC News is asked to set record straight on *deceitful* editing

NEW YORK – The White House on Monday called on NBC News to set the record straight on “deceitful” editing of an interview with President Bush, in which correspondent Richard Engel asks whether comments about the president of Iran were directed at Barack Obama.

Bush aides were angered by how the president’s answer was portrayed when Engel questioned him about his condemnation of “the false comfort of appeasement” in an address last week to the Israeli Knesset. NBC stood by its treatment of the interview Monday.

Bush had mentioned the president of Iran in his speech and said: “Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.”

Obama’s campaign considered that statement an attack on him, which the White House has denied.

Engel asked Bush if he was referring to Obama in his speech.

As it appeared on “Nightly News” Sunday and the “Today” show Monday, Bush’s response was: “You know, my policies haven’t changed, but evidently the political calendar has … And when, you know, a leader of Iran says that they want to destroy Israel, you’ve got to take those words seriously.”

But the White House said NBC edited out these words that Bush said between those two sentences: “People need to read the speech. You didn’t get it exactly right, either. What I said was that we need to take the words of people seriously.”

See the full text of the White House letter

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Complaint over Bush interview edit

I think most people that read here already know, I’m not a big fan of George Bush, I have never been a big fan of the guy, I think he’s a very ineffectual president, I think he took the wrong course when he took us to Iraq and there have been more than a few things said about his love of ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION.

When Bush speaks, you don’t have to edit it to get some kind of different message out there, and when the man is right, when I feel he’s right, I will come to his defense, and this time, I feel he’s very right.

If the MSM had their way, Obama would be in the process of coronation, he is the darling of the left leaning media, and yeah, I do include NBC in that group.

What the MSM needs to realize it this, it’s not their job to make the news, it’s not their job to interpret the news, their job is to report the news, exactly as it happened. The guy on the anchor desk isn’t a political analyst, he’s a talking head, most reporters are as dumb as a box of rocks and the guys in the editing room have no business editing out anything that isn’t beneath standards, regardless of who says it.

I am all for 1st amendment rights, I exercise mine here daily, but I don’t re-write the news. I use their story, exactly as it’s written, and then I add my perspective to it in the form of commentary, and if that were what NBC had done, reported exactly what the president had said, and then thrown in their commentary, with the caveat that it was commentary, then they did nothing wrong.

If they deliberately edited the words of the president to make it appear that he said something he didn’t, or to make their readers perceive his words in a way that was totally different than the specific intent, then NBC needs to ‘man up’ and admit they were wrong, change the story back to it’s original content and issue a very public apology to the White House, the nation and to President Bush.