Without question, one of the most significant new revelations to come out of the interview was Cheney's acknowledgement that he had consumed alcohol at lunch before accidentally shooting his friend in the face.
Yet Fox News chose not to broadcast that acknowledgement, as Media Matters explained. Instead, Hume paraphrased Cheney's comments, thus sparing the Vice President the potential embarrassment of repeated television airing of a video clip of his acknowledgment that he was drinking before he shot his friend. Worse, the decision not to broadcast Cheney's acknowledgement that he had "a beer" but that "nobody was under the influence" deprived viewers of the opportunity to assess Cheney's demeanor and credibility as made the comments.
Fox even omitted that portion of the interview from the video it posted on its web page -- video it touted as the "full interview," even though it wasn't.
Hume also failed to ask Cheney some of the most obvious -- and important -- questions raised by the shooting incident and Cheney's handling of it. During the interview with Hume, Cheney took responsibility for the shooting, and absolved his victim of blame. Given Cheney's comments, an obvious -- perhaps the most obvious -- question would have been "If the shooting was your fault, why did you allow your designated spokespeople to spend three days saying it wasn't your fault and blaming your victim?" Perhaps followed by "Have you apologized to Mr. Whittington for allowing your surrogates to smear him?" Or "Did you surrogates blame Mr. Whittington on their own, or did you instruct them to?" Or "Have they apologized to Mr. Whittington?"
Hume asked none of these questions; asked nothing like them. He made no attempt to address the disconnect between Cheney's statement that he, and not Mr. Whittington, were at fault and the three-day blame-the-victim smear campaign launched on Cheney's behalf.
He did, however, ask Cheney if he hit the quail he was aiming for when he shot his friend in the face.
Good thing we got that cleared up.
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Comments: 43
Thanks for the article, Shava. Can never get too much truth ;-)
In response to this from Bert:
What else would expect from Fox News? If it had been a Democrat, can you imagine the blowup they would have given it? It would have been the worst atrocity since the Holocaust!
Bert Bigelow, Feb 18, 2006
MY GOD,....CNN was owned in part by a woman who sat grinning for a photo-op on a North Vietnames anti-aircraft gun. We on the right sat in silence while CNN pushed left-wing crap for years...then FOX came along and handed them their lunch.
Gee, doth they not protest too much?
Good writing, Shava! I one should listen to what the other side is saying, but like Christian Radio annoucers,the sound of the Fox TV voices irritates the heck out of me, much less the content.
Chappaquidick speaks to the double-standard of politics. Bill Janklow, a congressman from S. Dakota killed a man by failing to stop at a stop sign. Janklow was forced to resign after being convicted of manslaughter.
Kennedy remains in office.
I hope you can appreciate the disparaty between the treatment of Kennedy and Janklow.
By the way, Kennedy was drinking HEAVILY at Chappaquidick.
Fox censored the article and published a news clip saying it was the FULL INTERVIEW. That's irresponsible journalism. Whether or not CNN was biased or irresponsible falls (and personally, I thought they had neither a right nor left but pro-biz bias -- Turner, not his wife, had more influence) on CNN, but does not excuse Fox.
You are engaging in diversionary tactics.
I really don't care if Cheney had a beer at lunch, or whatever -- although personally, I wouldn't have drunk any drug but maybe (and questionably) caffiene before going out with a firearm. And yes, I do hunt. I am not a blue stater, I am a Vermonter. We are, historically, fair and balanced. We have republicans and socialists. :)
But Fox thought it was serious enough to censor and lie about their clip.
Frankly, you seem to think I am part of this amorphous left, but I'd criticize any media that did this. I personally, for example, can't ABIDE Air America because they are just as bad as folks like Rush, IMHO, and add very little to intelligent journalism. They are all about adrenaline, and such things don't add to the education of the Jeffersonian citizen.
FOX LIED. Stop apologizing for them. If someone you like steals someone, you don't say, "Gosh, but this other dude over here stole something, so it's ok, right?"
Oh, wait, a lot of business people on the right and left, but without ethics, do that. Never mind. Are those the folks you want to be associated with? People without professional ethics?
You would be a better advocate for the right if you helped police your own.
Much to do about nothing.
Of course your other article published today Deadeye Dick on late night
reveals more an obsession with Cheney than with accuracy in the media.
This is a non-story and a non-event that has amply illustrated how the media plays to a very small crowd of fanatics. ABC published a poll yesterday that revealed 65% of the American people feel that this story was over-played by the media.
The fact that the media would pander to a marginalized crowd of activist reveals a great deal about the biases of the media itself. As if there were any doubt in that department.
Well, let's see exactly where you troll for your "information".
So where did THIS story come from? See how the leftwing Media-Matters group describes themselves:
Yes, I would say that I am justified in seem to thinking that you are part of this amorphous left.
If you're willing to watch conversations like this over time you'll notice a couple of things result.
- First, conservatives have their images of liberals further reinforced.
- Then liberals, seeing the inflamatory rhetoric in the reaction of conservativs are outraged at the reaction and get nastier.
Meanwhile rational readers start to drift away from the conversation, shaking their heads if not ducking them to avoid being caught in the crossfire. Maybe a more reasoned approach might draw more people to each point of view.
And I agree that the media frenzy is the story, not Cheney's beer. I think I said that. You are just flaming without reading for content.
people might think you think it's an issue after all.
"The guy had a beer. What exactly is your point?"
no, greg.
continue to ignore me - i love it - but you are full of it.
cheney says he had a beer, and as this post contends, we didn't even get to hear him say it. further, you nor i nor the police will never know for sure how many beers he had.
he's had five heart attacks, is on medications, and has an ambulance and medical team with him
everywhere he goes.
the guy had a beer, and shot a man in the chest, neck and face.
"it is necessary for conservatives to enter the debate so as to provide some degree of counter-balance to keep the left from tipping over too far."
yes - our truths must be counter-balanced by your bullshit. good work, greg.
It's forty years later and you're using this to rationalize every drinking problem the Republicans have - without mentioning the fact that Kennedy has spent the last forty years doing everything he can to make this a better world while those Republicans and currently screwing up. Isn't that persecution of some sort?
Let's talk about TODAY. About what is happening TODAY in the nation. What is going wrong with the nation NOW...and quit dragging up red herrings from the distant past to try to divert our attention.
instead, hume said to cheney about the shot that hit whittington:
"And you -- and I take it, you missed the bird."
Yes, let's do that.
TODAY, Ted Kennedy sits as a senior senator and as testament to the privilege of wealth and power and as a reminder that no matter how much the left lectures the world on morality, they are most often speaking solely to the morality of others.
Regardless, Kennedy is Massachusetts' house to clean, if you believe it must be. He's 2% of the Senate.
Cheney is all our VP -- we (presumably) all voted in the election that brought him to office, and his decisions effect every one of us every day, as he is a major strategic architect (unlike most VPs) of this administration's policies.
He is a person of interest and his integrity concerns all of us in a far more poignant way than whatever Kennedy did, or is doing.
BTW, Greg, you should go look at the demographics of the Senate, particularly the older senators. None of them are working class stiffs. None of them has the time to really represent middle America, far less the plurality of poor and working folks they should be representing, and just don't get.
Anyone with a couple terms in the Senate is, in fact, a testament to privilege, and *all* of them are voting, evey session, on the morality of people with whose lives they have no real empathetic connection. Your argument about Kennedy being exceptional holds very little water.
Can we get back to your cleaning up Fox's faux pas, if not to say distortion, which *compounded* Cheney's delay and made your folks look so bad? Doesn't that make you mad? Don't you want to tell them not to make your VP look bad with such lapses of integrity?
I feel that way when someone on the right screws up. But perhaps you're more of a "football fan" politico, just rooting for your team and not worried about your own folks' integrity?
I am not trying to make a big deal out of a simple hunting accident for partisan purposes -- just thought it was a good chance to pay tribute to old Harry, a thoroughly decent man. However, I was offended by the never-our-fault White House spin team. Cheney adviser Mary Matalin said of her boss, "He was not careless or incautious (and did not) violate any of the (rules). He didn't do anything he wasn't supposed to do." Of course he did, Ms. Matalin, he shot Harry Whittington.
Which brings us to one of the many paradoxes of the Bush administration, which claims to be creating "the responsibility society." It's hard to think of a crowd less likely to take responsibility for anything they have done or not done than this bunch. They're certainly good at preaching responsibility to others -- and blaming other people for everything that goes wrong on their watch.
Of course the Cheney shooting was an accident.
But is it an accident if your home and your life are destroyed by the flood following a hurricane? Especially if the flood was caused by failed levees, a government responsibility?
Is it an accident if you are born with a clubfoot and your parents are too poor to pay for the operation to fix it? Is there any societal responsibility in such a case?
Is it an accident when your manufacturing job gets shipped overseas and all you can find to replace it is a low- wage job at the big-box store with no health insurance, and your kid breaks his leg, and you can't pay the bill, so you have to declare bankruptcy under a new law that leaves you broke for good, with no chance of ever getting out of debt? Or was all of that caused by deliberate government policy? Cheney is much given to lecturing us about taking responsibility. When and where does societal responsibility come in?
It's the oldest trick in the world. Yawn.
How 'bout staying on the subject for a change, Greg.
Now, I don't happen to believe Ted Kennedy's own account of the incident. I visited the scene in 1978, and I thought there were some things in the story that didn't jibe at all with what I saw. But he did make a complete televised statement at the time, in which he accepted responsibility for the events. Nobody censored out what they didn't like, and none of his staffers tried to blame anyone else.
And, to compare an incident of last week to one that was 37 years ago really compares apples and oranges.
~~
thanks, joe.
that was scary accurate.
it's been said by the administration that tens of thousands of innocent iraqis have been killed. the real number is likely in the hundreds of thousands.
we're approaching the day when more american troops will have died in iraq than total people killed in the world trade center "attack".
even calling it an attack is a stretch. it was a criminal act, but then - the administration can't justify all of its actions unless this is a "war".