CBS covers-up humiliating McCain error, misleads national audience

Following up on the last post, John McCain, in response to a question from CBS anchor Katie Couric, demonstrated bizarre confusion about the basics of the U.S. surge policy in Iraq. McCain got the basic timeline and history of the surge backwards, insisting that the surge prompted the Anbar Awakening, which is the opposite of reality.

Given that McCain is betting his entire campaign on the surge and his expertise, I argued that this mistake is arguably the most serious by a presidential candidate in years.

Which is why it’s more than a little odd that CBS News not only edited McCain’s humiliating error out of its broadcast, but even shuffled the interview around to make McCain’s response less ridiculous.

For those of you who can’t watch clips online, the video shows a report — partially from MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and partially from The Jed Report — that shows, side-by-side, the original CBS News interview, and what CBS News actually aired.

The network showed viewers Couric’s question in full, but instead of airing McCain’s actual response — the one that showed McCain getting the basics of the surge backwards — CBS took a different answer to a different question and pasted it into the broadcast, leaving viewers with the impression that it was McCain’s actual response to Couric’s inquiry.

Someone needs to lose their job over this.



It’s curious, to put it mildly, on multiple levels.

Why would CBS News cover-up arguably the biggest candidate error of the entire presidential campaign?

Why would CBS News mix-and-match McCain’s responses to make him appear less incompetent?

Why would CBS News broadcast a question but not the answer to the question?

Why would CBS News post the entire actual interview online, making it easy for us to see their mischief?

Why would CBS News deliberately take the most newsworthy element of the interview, and leave it on the editing room floor?

Why didn’t Katie Couric hear McCain’s ridiculous answer, and ask a follow-up question seeking clarification?

On balance, McCain’s striking ignorance is clearly more important than CBS News’ journalistic malpractice. But it’s nevertheless hard to know what the network was thinking.

I’d just add that around the same time that McCain was demonstrating scandalous ignorance about U.S. policy in Iraq, and CBS News was covering that ignorance up, McCain’s campaign was whining about the media going easy on Barack Obama. The irony is rich.