A great example of pushback against the distortions of the MSM, as documented by Ken Shepherd of NewsBusters:
When a liberal network producer promises you a “fair and balanced” treatment of your organization, it may be okay to trust, but you absolutely must verify. That’s the lesson that the American Kennel Club can provide for conservatives, business owners, and pretty much anyone who is a likely target of a sensationalistic liberal media hit piece. Let me explain.
On April 7, AKC representatives sat down for a 30-minute interview with HBO’s Real Sports contributor Soledad O’Brien about allegations from critics that the Club’s breed standards inevitably lead to unhealthy purebred dogs, some of whom die rather prematurely. The AKC made sure to record the entirety of the interview for their own records so as to respond to a biased hit piece if and when it should air, which it did on the evening of Tuesday, April 22.
Shepherd goes on to note that the AKC put up the video on their site showing their answers that Soledad and her crew edited out, along with contact info (email, phone, and Twitter) to aid AKC members to “punch back twice as hard,” as a man much admired at Time-Warner-CNN-HBO likes to say.
In order to assist his rise to prominence, back in September of 2008, ABC’s Charlie Gibson turned his interview with Sarah Palin into a melange of jump cuts and ransom note editing. In response, Glenn Reynolds wrote a piece for the New York Post titled “Bring Your Own Camera.” As Glenn wrote, everybody who agrees to sit down for an interview with the MSM should demand the opportunity to record their own copy of the interview:
TV is all about the editing – and even modest tweaks can drastically change how an interviewee comes across.
So, when you sit down for an interview (unless it’s live), you’re putting yourself, like Homer, at the mercy of the editors. Usually they’re honest, but not always.
But there’s a remedy now, with technology being what it is. If I were a candidate, I think I’d bring my own camera to interviews, shoot the whole thing and post the unedited raw video on the Web.
The technology for this is easy – I’ve got a little Sony HD video camera that records on a chip and fits in a coat pocket or purse – and putting video on the Web is a snap, too.
Of course, the knowledge that this will happen is likely to be enough to keep people honest – but if anything is edited unfairly, the full video will tell the tale. No need to wait for Groundskeeper Willie to appear.
TV journalists won’t be happy with this, of course, but it’s hard to see a principled basis for objecting.
In the past, the tools for broadcast newsgathering were expensive and specialized, and much of the media’s power came from the fact that no one else had them. Those times are long gone, and candidates, and journalists, are going to have to adapt.
Particularly when guests know they’ll be appearing on HBO’s Real Sports, a show hosted by Bryant Gumbel — who as host of NBC’s Today Show once dropped this infamous clanger:
Previewing his prime-time special The Racial Attitudes and Consciousness Exam (RACE), September 5 Today – “This test is not going to tell you whether you’re a racist or a liberal.”
A curious dichotomy, considering that Real Sports’ Soledad O’Brien has played a starring role in programming at CNN that has managed to combine leftism and racism remarkably well. Prior to her lateral transfer last year across corporate divisions at the giant Time-Warner-CNN-HBO conglomerate, she famously praised Rev. Wright’s race-obsessed 2008 speech to the NAACP as a “home run,” only to see Wright tossed down CNN’s memory hole one week later on orders — explicit or otherwise — from the Obama campaign.
And four years later, O’Brien moderated a panel at CNN in 2012 on academia’s “Critical Race Theory,” in which a guest asked Breitbart.com’s Joel Pollack why he was afraid of African-Americans. As Bryan Preston wrote in response at PJM Tatler, “Not that this should matter, but in the interests of truth, Joel Pollak’s wife is black.”
Certainly, Soledad’s bosses at Time-Warner-CNN-HBO are pretty comfortable combining racism and leftism, as evidenced by why she was dumped from CNN’s early morning show last year:
Buried 11 paragraphs into an article at MSM house organ Media Bistro in late January was a report that Soledad O’Brien’s morning show was being cancelled by Time-Warner-CNN-HBO for — well, we’ll let Media Bistro explain:
Many staffers were stunned when Feder constantly complained that the viewership of “Early Start” and “Starting Point” was “too ethnic,” based on the high concentration of minority viewers. This common complaint worked itself up through the company, to CNN’s Diversity Committee, and to other staffers, who were mortified that a CNN executive was squabbling over attracting minority viewers.
As Allahpundit of Hot Air quipped, “To think, on the very day that O’Brien was all but accusing Joel Pollak of racism for objecting to Critical Race Theory, CNN honchos might have been having the ‘too ethnic’ conversation in the executive washroom.”
So kudos to the American Kennel Club for doing their homework before sitting down for an interview. Considering what’s gotten into the water there, that’s something that everybody who comes into contact with a representative of Time-Warner-CNN-HBO should do.
Just ask the mayor of Chicago.
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