Posted on 09/19/2012 8:28:06 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The last 48 hours of media commentary has evinced an interesting, and entirely unsurprising, double standard, or perhaps triple standard. When undercover videos of ACORN and NPR by James O'Keefe or of Planned Parenthood by Lila Rose get published, the media immediately insinuates that they contain deceptive editing and demand that the full videos get released --- even though media organizations like the broadcast networks rarely if ever operate by that same standard. Mother Jones ripped O'Keefe at the time for not providing all of the video from his undercover exposé of NPR (via Breitbart):
To the list of journalism's greatest disgraces, let us now add James O'Keefe. O'Keefe calls himself an investigative reporter, though as far as we can tell the only group of journalists he has anything in common with are habitual fabricators like Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass, and Janet Cooke.
But that's not the scandal we're talking about. The real scandal is that—even though by the time he posted a “sting” of a top NPR fundraiser, O’Keefe was notorious for creating deceptive video smear jobs (ACORN? Hello?)—the media repeated the allegations uncritically.
Actually, O’Keefe eventually released all of the video of the ACORN and NPR stings, which didn’t change their stories at all.
But the video of Mitt Romney at a May fundraiser from David Corn and Mother Jones brings us a new innovation — the triple standard. William Jacobson, Moe Lane, and The Blaze discovered that, contrary to claims made by Corn and MJ, the video wasn’t complete at all — and had a significant gap at a critical time in Romney’s remarks:
[Romney]“We do all these polls — I find it amazing. We poll all these people to see where you stand in the polls but 45 percent of the people vote for the Republicans and 48 or 49–,” This is where the first part of the video cuts out.
Part two picks up seemingly on a completely different subject: China.
“…about twice as much as China, not 10 times as much like is reported. And we have responsibility for the whole world, they’re only focused on one little area of the world, the south china sea…”
Something is missing. Romney’s 47% answer was cut off before completed, and is not picked up on the Part 2 audio video.
So the “complete” audio/video has not been released by Corn, or Corn never had it to begin with.
Jacobson demanded an explanation from Corn, who replied that an “equipment malfunction” occurred:
According to the source, the recording device inadvertently turned off. The source noticed this quickly and turned it back one. The source estimates that one to two minutes, maybe less, of recording was missed.
In other words, it’s not the “full tape” promised by Corn and MJ on Twitter:
@davidcorndc audio missing bet parts 1 and 2 of full video — switches topics even though answer re voters not done — what gives?
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) September 18, 2012
Breitbart’s Joel Pollak blasts Mother Jones for its “deceptive editing” and hypocrisy:
Earlier on Tuesday, new media pioneer James O’Keefe pointed out the hypocrisy of the mainstream media in accepting, without question, a snippet of a video recording that aimed to portray a Republican in a bad light, while conservatives are still doubted even after providing full video or audio, as O’Keefe did with his famous ACORN tapes.
Whether Romney is right or wrong about the “47 percent” of Americans he says have become dependent on government–he stood by his May remarks on Monday evening–he may have been taken out of context.
Mother Jones has failed a basic test and broken its promise to its readers and the public. There is now reason to doubt that it provided Romney’s full remarks–not just the context, but the remarks themselves. And there is new reason to suspect manipulation.
Corn promised the complete version of Romney’s remarks. Instead, he provided a version that is missing a large portion of video at the critical moment.
Mother Jones’s entire story now deserves to be treated with suspicion, if not contempt.
I’m not sure whether the context would have helped or hurt — because I don’t know exactly what Romney said other than what Corn and MJ released. It may be that the context doesn’t change what we heard, but it’s equally likely that the “equipment malfunction” cut the heart out of Romney’s point. And I don’t know whether Corn or MJ had anything to do with the way that video got put together, but their description of it as “full” and “complete” was clearly misleading — and it’s hard to believe that an experienced hand like Corn wouldn’t have noticed that the first video ended on one subject while the second video opened on another entirely.
The mainstream media that demanded total transparency from O’Keefe and Rose (and got it) didn’t seem too interested in applying that standard to Corn and Mother Jones, either. The only thing left to wonder is whether Mother Jones will apply its own O’Keefe Standard to itself and declare itself anathema to journalism.
(Actually, sometimes they are more flak chuckers than fact checkers as they go about shielding their ideological kin.)
Funny prediction. I don’t understand why the Romney campaign is not saying that the tape was doctored and therefore the entire context of the message is not conveyed. I suppose even if they did, the lamestream media would never report it.
That this incident should only underline his fundamental dishonesty - which he's exhibited without fail during a long and undistinguished career - comes as a surprise to no one.
“The Medium is the Massage” (sic)
The MSM has their story, truth does not matter. The IMAGE of romney speaking with the MSM saying what that means is all that matters.
There could be NO AUDIO and the MSM would still present the same lie.
IT IS ALL IMAGRY. The media uses images like lightbulbs. It only is a light that is used to provide a platform to deliver their spin.
Romney is at a distinct disadvantage here. He is honest and forthright and not prone to resorting to lies and deception to get his message across.
The Obama people are none of these, prove it every day and will troll any sewer to gain temporary advantage.
Maybe it was just me.. but I swear that the way ABC radio “news” reported the 47 percent it sounded like that it had nothing to do with the election but instead Romney was saying that as president he would not represent that 47 percent. Screw them.
Maybe because the context of the message is nothing to run away from but actually something that is true and something to run towards!!!!
Paul Shanklin ? ( Rush’s parody man ) please ? what was really on that “ Doctored “ video and audio from Mother Jones ?
It's not just you. That's the way the Democrats are trying to spin this, and the kneepad media is reporting it as fact -- by carefully excerpting even the parts of the tape that were distributed.
My guess is they don’t have their own full tape of the interview, so they don’t know exactly what was said. They can’t take the chance that the rest of the video exists, and that they might say something contradicted by the missing video.
Since his message was truthful, and the only issue was really his conflagration of three things into one, there isn’t much to “refute”.
The real refutation is that when you are answering questions in a private conversation, you might illustrate things with shorthand that doesn’t reflect a full thought or understanding. You aren’t trying to be factual, because the audience doesn’t care — if they did, they might ask you, and you’d clarify.
I often when speaking to people make up statistics. At the beginning, I’ll tell them I don’t know the real numbers, so everything I say will be guesswork to illustrate points. If someone taped me 5 minutes later, all my facts could be wrong, but it is meaningless.
Note though that it is nearly impossible for Romney to actually try to explain away his talk by saying he wasn’t trying to be factual.
What he COULD have said if he wanted was that he knew that the 47 percents in the three parts weren’t all the same people — but that’s what he did by saying his wording was inartful. And trying to excuse it would have detracted from him making the point that Obama is making people dependent on government, and believes it is good for people to depend on government.
And hilariously, when i went to a hill article about this yeasterday, the entire comments section was full of liberals stating, as if it was a proven fact which could be used as the basis for all conversation, that Mitt Romney was a known pathological liar.
Someone even said his religion encouraged pathological lying, to which another person came back screaming “Harry Reid isn’t a liar”. They also threw in all the things people make fun of here regarding mormonism.
It’s why it is hard to have a rational discussion of politics in this country anymore. Everybody thinks their own truth is self-evident, and we all think we are entitled to our own set of facts.
Also, you have to wonder why a video that was released in May is considered news in September. Why didn’t they report on the video when it first came out?
Probably don’t know what was said so don’t want to say something that wasn’t said and get caught when the videographer pulls the edited video out of his trash bin on the computer or something and sends the full section into Mother Jones or something.
Their stance seems appropriate.....explain what he was saying and turn it into a choice between two Americas (plus bring up the redistribution comment). Look, I believe the government has some role to help people in situations like unemployment etc., which puts me to the left of some on FR. But, there are limits, and if Romney can tap into that issue......that will help him. I think most Americans understand government dependency is a bad thing. Sure, get help for a bit, but there comes a limit and you must stop relying on government.
“Maybe it was just me.. but I swear that the way ABC radio “news” reported the 47 percent it sounded like that it had nothing to do with the election but instead Romney was saying that as president he would not represent that 47 percent. Screw them.”
They are not the news reporters. They are an extension of the Obama campaign.
Why does the title have (undoctored version) added when there is no undoctored version anywhere in the links.
I don’t understand why the Romney campaign is not saying that the tape was doctored and therefore the entire context of the message is not conveyed.
Maybe because he knows the missing part wouldn’t alter what he said? Or make what he said seem even worse?
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