Katie Couric / CBS News & McCain footage - Evidence NOT MEDIA BIAS ?

[quantass]

I find Dan Abrahams to be impartial but am a bit confused by his stance on the whole Katie Couric - CBS News and John McCain switcharoo footage. On the Monday, July 28 show Roy Sekoff of the Huffington Post brought up the CBS News incident. Abrahams promptly dimissed this argument stating it is not proof of media bias toward McCain.

Can someone please explain to me how this is not evidence of media bias? Is it not common practice for the media to use the direct response to a question.

[Kokonoe]

1. Imagine the uproar of republicans if CBS changed Mccanes

answer to something he did not agree with.

This has more layers. Its obvious the McCain campaign is editing The CBS Evening News.

[Captain Angry]

2. If Obama's answer were changed, the station would have been burned to the ground.

McCain's answer changes to what they thought he meant, and that's fine.

It's not bias, it's covering for your co-worker at that point.

[depakid]

3. "Can someone please explain to me how this is not evidence of media bias?}

The Obama campaign refuses to emphasize this and other blatant errors and omissions in their public statements. Nor will they use the big money they've raised to put the spotlight on McCain, et al., to question whether they're fit to govern.

Therefore- no one in the corporate media has any need to respond or discuss it- and if they don't discuss it- it isn't an issue.

And goes down the memory hole.

Pretty simple, really.

[Hamlette]

4. Abrams is right

if Katie Couric had anything to do with it, she had NO idea that McCain had flubbed in the timeline of when the awakening happened.

I was clueless and I follow politics closely.

Abrams has hammered McCain harder than anyone else. He might not have made his point well tonight but I'm willing to give Katie a pass primarily because I don't think she is that smart.

McCain's answer, the one that was cut, was not well worded. Katie (or whoever edited the interview) thought the bigger story was when McCain said Obama is the Manchurian Candidate and is here to rape your white women and eat your babies (translation: Obama would rather lose a war than lose an election.)

We sound tin foil hatesque when we think Katie knew what she was doing.

[5thGenDemocrat]

5. Katie Couric was an honors grad at the University of Virginia

Her mother was a writer and her father was a news editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She's getting paid somewhere around $15 million a year to front CBS Evening News (somewhere, Edward R. Murrow is spinning in his grave). CBS presents her as being a premier journalist -- one hired in the wake of Dan Rather's screwing the pooch in a similar manner.
She may be stupid (I do believe she's gotten where she is on her supposed cuteness/perkiness, but the fact she was an honors student at UVA should belie that), still, stupidity can't be an excuse when you're the face of what was once America's finest broadcast news outfit. What we have here is a simple case of not dotting the i's and crossing the t's -- of not checking the facts and presenting a manipulation as the truth. It is a journalistic failure of the most basic level.
It's what we've come to expect from Corporate News -- only this painted whore has nicer legs than the others.
Katie should be shit-canned just as Rather was. But she won't be.
John
Unless it's over ratings -- which is the only thing that matters any more.

[Hamlette]

8. I guess I give her a pass because I didn't know when the Anbar Awakening happened either

Abrams is on our side, one of 2.5 in the media (Tweety is the .5 as you never know from day to day where the hell he will be).

[5thGenDemocrat]

9. That's fine

I'd agree with PCIntern (below) as far as journalists being pretty bright. When I spent my four years at a mid-sized daily paper here in Michigan, my colleagues were some of the smartest folks I've ever met.
Thing is, Ms Couric should have known about the Awakening or, failing that, have taken the time to find out before she presented (as I said) manipulation as fact. It's her profession, after all -- one she's paid damned well to pursue and one she is expected to perform at an extremely high level.
Seems to me she didn't and seems to me it isn't much different than the screw-up Dan Rather (a far more accomplished news person) made.
But each of us are going to have our own take on it. And neither of us are privy to the particulars. So your perspective is just as good as mine.
John
I've been up all night. I'm going to go get some sleep.

[PCIntern]

6. Excuse me?

"Not that smart"...are you kidding? these people are REALLY bright...they may be outclassed in their own medium by even brighter people, but if you think that you can just show up and do this stuff, you can't, anymore than an amateur softball player can take over a position in the Major Leagues. They know their business...I treat a lot of minor media folk here in Philly and they are well-versed in their work and the machinations thereof, even though many people think they're dopey 'cause they don't have star quality, such as it is, of the main anchors.

[Supersedeas]

10. it was a blatant manipulation of the transcript to be McCain in a better light

the transcript proves it -- whether the practice is assigned to your sweet Katie or someone else at CBS, the transcript speaks for itself.

[Hamlette]

11. the transcript does not "prove" it

for heavens sake. Yes, the interview as presented was manipulated. But because they manipulated it does not prove they did it to put McCain in a better light.

The way I see it, they put McCain in a worse light. What she put in place of the answer he gave was McCain's statement that Obama was a traitor. That comment was so over the top it will not serve John well in the long run.

It is one thing to have Swiftboaters out there shitting on presidential candidates, its different when the other candidate does it. His comment about Obama going to the gym instead of seeing the troops (actually in a commercial) is being trashed by the media as a lie.

I don't think Katie did it to make McCain look good. She did it either because she didn't understand the importance of his statement on the timing of the Anbar Awakening (which I didn't get either until KO told me) or she thought the other answer was just as daming and made for better TV.

(Everyone has STILL failed to understand the importance of the Awakening vs the surge argument. It doesn't matter when the hell they happened. Neither strategy is right. Effective counter insurgencies direct power back to the center. Neither is doing that but rather creating little power centers all over the country. The way I understand history, that does not make for a stable state. Especially when those little power centers are heavily armed. That's what we should be talking about, not Katie Couric for gawds sake. If you want to defend Obama on this issue, defend him on the facts, not the bickering otherwise you play into the right wing's agenda. Keep us talking about Katie and not what a failure the surge really is.)

[ErinBerin84]

7. yeah, Dan Abrams thought that was really conspiracy theorist.

But it's just strange that its not an "edited for time" issue, like CBS's statement first suggested, since they completely deleted the answer and replaced it with an unrelated answer. At the least, it shows that the media is not biased AGAINST McCain, bc if they were, CBS would have been purposely looking for things to trip McCain up. Brad Blakeman is such a fool. He said "Well..the cable news shows are biased against McCain, and the study does not include that! The American people know the truth!" Ok, Bradly. I bet you a million dollars that if the study had included cable news, the results would be even MORE damaging to your case. Fuck him.