Did CNN do an unethical number on Gov. Pawlenty?
It sure looks like it. The former MN gov appeared on CNN’s Piers Morgan show Tuesday night, and Morgan asked Pawlenty if, should the situation arise, he would accept a veep slot with Donald Trump or another candidate. Hours before the show aired, CNN released a clip of that exchange on its Political Ticker blog, cut so that it includes only the following part.
Morgan: There was a poll out only today, a CNN poll which probably made quite the disturbing reading for you. Did you ever imagine in your wildest nightmares that you’d see a poll of potential Republican candidates which had you at 2 percent and Donald Trump at 19 percent?
Pawlenty: Well for me, I’m just getting known Piers. So our trajectory is kind of a tortoise and hare strategy and as we get better known particularly in the early states I think you’ll see those numbers change for me. But as to Donald Trump, the Donald I think he’s funny, I think he’s exciting. He’s obviously very successful. I think he brings a lot to the debate so I welcome him to it. If hair is going to be a factor in this race, Piers then I’m going to grow my mullet back out. I had a mullet when I played hockey in high school.
Morgan: In a hypothetical scenario governor, if someone like Donald Trump was to emerge as the Republican nominee and asked you to be vice president, would you accept that honor?
Pawlenty: I’m running for president. I’m not putting my hat in the ring rhetorically or ultimately for vice president so I’m focused on running for president.
And hype ensued. But that wasn’t the entire exchange.
In the entire exchange, Morgan notices what Pawlenty has just said, and asks the obvious follow-up.
Morgan: And governor, unless I was mistaken you just said you were running for president. Can we take that as a formal announcement?
Pawlenty: Well I’ve got an exploratory committee up and running and we’ll have a final or full announcement in the coming weeks here, it won’t be too much longer, but everything is headed in that direction Piers.
So…no formal announcement, just a reaction to a question asked, the kind of reaction a candidate always gives when they’re asked nearly a year before any primaries if they’ll settle for second place. Pawlenty could have been a tad clearer, but the full exchange is clear enough. CNN kept that part of the interview off its web site, though, only releasing it this morning after it had had several hours to milk the “I’m running for president” headline and get the Drudge link, and only after the show aired last night, at which time the jig is up. In fact, the truncated version of their post, which appears on the Ticker’s main page, still promotes the exchange as if the exploratory committee portion never happened. Most readers won’t bother clicking through to see the full exchange. They’ll watch the clip, see the CNN write-up, and conclude something that isn’t true. This…is CNN? Yep.
So why is this relevant? Well, for one, once you’ve moved from the exploratory committee phase past the formal announcement phase, the campaign finance rules change. But more importantly, CNN knew all along that Pawlenty had not made a formal announcement that he’s running. It’s right there in their tape — he’s still in the exploratory committee phase. But that relevant fact wasn’t there in the way CNN presented the quotes last night. CNN hyped the whole thing, at the expense of the truth. This…is CNN.
This should be the reason the rest of them (and Pawlenty) should refuse to do an interview with CNN.
Let them see what happens to trash journalists.
“Did CNN do an unethical number on Gov. Pawlenty?”
Is this a trick questions or are you being facetious?
It must be facetious, because CNN advertises themselves as the most trusted network for news. I never hear that whole line clearly, because every time it comes on, I immediately have a choking fit.
This is a good sign for Tpaw. CNN only digs this deep into the dirty tricks bag when they think a candidate has a chance of winning.
Now, if they begin parading the dominatrix mistresses in front of the cameras or pull out the mass murderer card, you will know that the Make Believe Media is on high alert.
CNN = Canary News Network; all yellow, all the time
Not that I disagree, but as unethical cutting goes, this is by far not as bad as other things I’ve seen the MSM do. Of course, we don’t know how badly they do this sometimes since they won’t release the original uneditted versions of, say, Palin’s interviews with Katie and Charlie.
Oh, heck. The LA Times won’t even release a years old tape of The One at a dinner with Rashid Khalidi.
Do you really expect anything different?
With small high quality digital camcorders readily available for $100, I don’t know why anyone agrees in this day and age to submit to this sort of network interview without making their own copy of it just to serve as “reference” later.
“After the Couric thing, any Republican candidate should demand, as a condition for an interview, their own camera crew be on set and creating their own video…”
I agree completely, but I’d not add the “especially”. If I were a candidate (heh), I’d do it even on Fox – or Reason – or even PJTV. (And, I’d add that ALL candidates would be well advised to do the same – left, right, center, wingnut, moonbat, or whomever.)
Media is biased, all media. Because people run media and most people hear what they want to hear and edit out the rest. If you want people to hear exactly what you said, you need to make your own record (and NOT edit it).
Oops – the second Anonymous was me – somehow I messed up the name. The Anonymous I was replying to is not the same person…
After the Couric thing, any Republican candidate should demand, as a condition for an interview, their own camera crew be on set and creating their own video, especially with CBS and now CNN. This would have the effect of discouraging these sort of lies.
Is this good for Pawlenty?
It seems to me like he gets two media splashes for one announcement now.
One now, one in a couple of weeks.
CNN fudged, but they just misinformed their audience rather than damaging Pawlenty.
“So why is this relevant? Well, for one, once you’ve moved from the exploratory committee phase past the formal announcement phase, the campaign finance rules change. But more importantly, CNN knew all along that Pawlenty had not made a formal announcement that he’s running.”
First of all, the rules don’t change based on how CNN edits a clip; they change when he actually announces. Second, if he’s not yet a candidate, he shouldn’t say that he is — twice, in fact, in the same response: “I’m running for president…. I’m focused on running for president.”
“So why is this relevant?” asks Mr. Preston. It isn’t.
Why does anyone think that there are such things as journalistic ethics, or if there were, that CNN would apply them in covering a Republican politician?
I don’t see anything unethical here. I’m no fan of CNN, but Pawlenty said, unprompted, “I’m running for president.” That’s news. CNN is ostensibly an alleged news organization. It’s not unethical to report news.
Now I’m sick and tired of the news media failing to report the Big Zero’s plain statements. See, e.g., “But a hybrid van!” That’s unethical. Not giving TPaw the same biased protective bubblewrap? Hardly an ethical dilemma. Why are you even making this an issue?
CNN has used a Darth Vader voice to impel you to understand that “This…is CNN”, but I don’t see this as an issue.
That was James Earl Jones. I haven’t watched CNN in so long–do they still use his voice? If not, I bet Jones pulled it out of embarrassment.
What is the matter with Republicans’ giving interviews without witnesses, their own film and a agreement that the participant has rights of fair play. How long will it take before we have grownups that know the MSM is a propaganda organ of the Democrats and Marxists. Surely Pawlenty is aware of what they do in behalf of their puppet masters. Palin gets sandbagged by Koric in a contrived setup and Pawlenty expects fair play?
This is the network that conceded to Saddam Hussein’s terms for access. Are we supposed to be surprised that they are less ethical than Mother Theresa?
Pawlenty has not yet formally announced. He may have asked them to keep that part of the exchange out of the show, because it sounds like a formal announcement. I know I would have. I am not going to blame CNN for this. It looks like they are doing him a solid. They DO have new ownership, remember.
I noticed that Piers kept asking the governor about Trump’s birther issue. Pawlenty, to his credit, kept steering the issue back to the deficit and jobs. That’s called staying on message.
Earlier, Piers did a fact check on a speech by Michelle Bachmann. I couldn’t help but think that, if CNN spent half the time fact checking the Dems, their ratings might not be in the dumper. Piers also was shocked – shocked! – that the Republican budget bill contained issues that were not related to the budget. Where was Mr. Morgan when Harry Reid was assembling a majority to pass the Senate Healthcare bill? We learned about this in 8th grade civics back in the 60s. It’s called “logrolling,” Piers, and it’s a great American tradition. You Brits might be excused from knowing that.
Talk about Unethical: White Privilege and Black Demands
A Minnesota school district, after laying off 94 teachers due to budget cuts, paid $160 per to send a group of teachers to a 3-day “White Privilege Conference” in Minneapolis focused on the proposition that America was ”built on the premise that the U.S. was started by white people for white people.”
Conference founder Eddie Moore Jr., PhD explained the purpose of the gathering. His screed reads like something out of the New Black Panther handbook.
“White supremacy, white privilege, racism and other forms of oppression,” he says, ”are designed for your destruction, designed to kill you, so what I want this conference to help people of color to understand is how that system works. How it can create little bitty things that add up, that cause hypertension . . . that cause you to maybe eat unhealthy [sic] or not exercise.”
Niger Innis, national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality and Bucknell University professor James Peterson debated the fiscal propriety and rationale of the conference on FNC’s “Hannity.”
Sean Hannity called the expenditure in the face of $7 million school district cuts “outrageous.” Innis termed the misuse of taxpayer dollars for such a conference “absurd” and “disgusting” and decried the purpose of creating a sense of “victimization” among blacks. Peterson concurred with Moore’s contention that “white privilege” exists in America and that the conference represented a wise use of scarce school funds because blacks have different “concerns” than whites.
Innis stressed that Asian kids far outperform whites in schools . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4132)
Your blatantly self-promoting comment might actually be worth reading if it wasn’t also obviously off-topic.
Try writing something about Pawlenty and/or CNN.
Who is this “T-paw”? Does the T stand for toast?
I thought so. Thanks.
Why did Pawlenty go on CNN anyway? We all know where CNN’s target audience is, and nobody there – Havana, Pyongyang, Riyadh and Gaza – knows who he is anyway.
What are you talking about Willis? For decades, every time the news media does a story on a conservative, republican or a right leaning libertarian, they either slam them, libel them or damn them with faint praise. You would be hard pressed to name one time where anyone covered one of the aforementioned without slimeing them in one way or another.
This is what Piers was known for, before reality television, rehabilitated him
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thecutline/20101208/bs_yblog_thecutline/piers-morgan-on-fake-iraq-war-photos-that-got-him-fired-it-was-a-moral-duty
If Pawlenty said “I’m running for president” and CNN quoted him correctly, I can’t see an ethical issue.
If Pawlenty said something in an on-the-record interview that is going to cause him a headache tough toenails for Pawlenty.
With regard to technicalities, does an off-hand comment in an interview constitute a “formal announcement” in the eyes of the law? If not, no harm no foul. If yes, that’s a pretty good reason for Pawlenty not to be the Prez if he’s that undisciplined.
I just want my country back…………..
He said he’s running for President and that he is focused on running for president. Sounds like a formal announcement to me.
What am I not getting?
They edited out the exploratory committee mention, from the story
The good news is very few people saw the original CNN program.
The bad news is you gave them publicity.
You have to be an ethical organization before you can be called unethical!