No More LOST for W, The White House Hates NBC
It seems that the White House hates NBC. And not just because the last episode of LOST left us all on the cliff (although we all hate them for that), but mostly because of the recent interview with GW they aired on Sunday's Nightly News. Dan Froomkin explains the problem in full in "the President v. the Peacock:"
There is more to the White House's unprecedented attack on NBC News yesterday than meets the eye.
The blistering letter to NBC from White House Counselor Ed Gillespie ostensibly focuses on the way President Bush's interview with NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel was edited for presentation on Sunday's Nightly News.
But NBC's handling of the interview was not atypical for a tightly-edited broadcast and did not violate any journalistic norms. The White House may believe that news outlets are obliged to reproduce all of Bush's non-answers in their rambling entirety, but that's not the way the news business works.
Here is video of the edited interview as shown on the Nightly News. Here is video of the entire interview, which was 15 minutes long. Here is the full White House transcript.
A major topic was Bush's controversial speech to the Israeli parliament last week. (See Friday's column for background.)
Read the full story - and the unedited interview exchange in full - here.















