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Last Wednesday morning I was watching CNN when they were just starting to cover the "lipstick" flap.
They led by running a brief video clip of Sarah Palin, then immediately cut to the clip showing just the one line where Obama said "putting lipstick on a pig", then they went to the McCain campaign's accusations that Obama had called Palin a pig. There was no complete video clip placing Obama's line in context and no immediate explanation of Obama's statement showing what he was referring to when he uttered "lipstick on a pig". Just the brief image of Palin, followed by Obama's edited clip with the "pig" line and then the discussion of McCain's outrage. In my opinion, this was clearly a misrepresentation of the facts creating a false impression as to what actually took place....in other words, it was a lie on the part of CNN.
This was the overwrought, hysterical media narrative at that moment: McCain accuses Obama of calling Palin a pig and McCain says that's outrageous...so, let's have battling surrogates from both camps argue about this on air to settle the matter. It's the media's usual MO: one side manufactures a controversy, the media reports on just the manufactured controversy, fails to report "just the facts" and put the whole thing into accurate context, then they give both sides equal time to have a food fight on the air to resolve the controversy. This isn't journalism, it's entertainment...much like "WWF Smackdown".
I immediately sent an email to CNN. Essentially, I stated everything above and called them out for their misleading coverage. A few minutes later I received a personal email (not one of those mass e-mailings CNN sends to everyone who sends them a comment) from the anchor, John Roberts. He greeted me by name and proceeded to defend their coverage. He ended up saying I had over-reacted and prematurely criticized CNN's coverage, that I was too quick to judge them and that they had, indeed, placed the issue in proper context and had been fair. I wondered if I had missed something while watching their report on the air that morning.
I responded to Roberts a few minutes later, pointing out the sequence of video clips in their report, their failure to place Obama's words in context at the time to show what he was actually referring to, and the fact that they had run a brief video clip of Palin immediately before Obama's clip to create the false impression in their viewers' minds that Obama was referring to Palin as a pig. I told him that this was not complete or accurate reporting and that it was a clear misrepresentation of the facts....in other words, it was a lie.
A few minutes later Roberts briefly responded again. He simply stated: "I know all that, but we can only report what happened"..... "we made the point of countering their accusation with clips of McCain saying the same thing - and illuminating the point that McCain was talking about Hillary, while Obama was referring to McCain." I didn't respond further and that was then end ot it. However, I got the impression that they were being pretty defensive at CNN about this issue, they probably got a lot of negative complaints.
Their initial report created a false impression....Obama calls Palin a pig and McCain is outraged...and that was what many viewers took away from the report. The fact that they later may have shown McCain saying the same line in reference to Hillary was not intended to clarify, it was not really relevant to the primary issue, and the intent was to add fuel to the fire and create more back-and-forth between both sides. And the fact that Obama was, indeed, referring to McCain's policies and not Palin when he made the remark was left out of the initial report.
This type of reporting is typical of the corporate media. They defend such reporting as just "doing their job and reporting the facts". But, it's clear they do not report the complete truth...that, obviously, is not their job. Their job is to create a flap, then have both sides argue about it on air, treating both responses as being equivalent and not taking sides.
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