By Thomas Lang
A minor stew has brewed this week between David Letterman, CNN, and the White House over the veracity of a film clip of a Bush campaign speech that Letterman aired on Monday night.
All the facts are still not clear, and unless either the White House or CNN start responding to inquiries, they may never be — but as of now, it appears that CNN is the goat of the story.
It all began Monday when Letterman ran an almost-comical clip of a March 20 Bush campaign speech that showed a kid, standing behind and off to the right of the president, relentlessly yawning and fidgeting through the president’s speech. The people clustered around the president and the child seem utterly unaware of the youngster’s antics as the president earnestly drones on. Letterman thought the situation amusing, and titled the film clip “George W. Bush Invigorating America’s Youth.”
The next day CNN picked up on the fun and replayed the clip twice during mid-day broadcasts, with additional “reporting.” The clip first played ten minutes before noon, just prior to a commercial break. When CNN came back from commercial anchor Daryn Kagan had this to say, “All right, had a good giggle before the break, that video from David Letterman. We’re being told by the White House that the kid, as funny as he was, was edited into that video, which would explain why the people around him weren’t really reacting. So that from the White House.”
About two hours later CNN replayed the clip, and this time, anchor Kyra Phillips had a different story, “OK. We’re told that that kid was there at that event, but not necessarily standing behind the president. So you can put it all together.”
Letterman, not surprisingly, took offense to CNN’s report of White House claims that the video was doctored. Ten minutes into Tuesday night’s show (which began taping at 5:30 p.m.) Letterman aired the CNN clip, with Kagan citing the White House charge that the video had been doctored. Dave then declared, “Now that, ladies and gentlemen, as sure as I’m sitting here is an out-and-out absolute one hundred percent lie.”
Minutes later, Letterman was passed news that CNN had called, and that “according to this information, the anchor woman misspoke, they never got a comment from the White House.”
Last night, Letterman reiterated his outrage, and said “an undisputable source, a very high-placed source” had told him that the White House had indeed called CNN on Tuesday with the doctored-video charge. He joked to his audience, “Makes you want to keep your hand on your wallet, doesn’t it? I’m telling you, this stinks so high.”
The blogosphere has been ablaze with this story and it was the first subject discussed in today’s “TV Column” in The Washington Post.
Here are Campaign Desk’s verdicts.
As to the charge that the video was doctored: Not guilty.
Here’s the official statement from Worldwide Pants, Inc., which produces Letterman’s show, provided by Thomas Keaney:
The video contained in the segment entitled “George W. Bush Invigorating America’s Youth” came from raw video of a speech given by President Bush in Orlando on March 20, 2004. The video was provided to us at our request by the Orlando CBS affiliate, WKMG. The segment consisted of a series of unmodified excerpts from that tape. We made no changes to the video’s content whatsoever, and any assertion that we somehow doctored the video are completely false.
WKMG news director Skip Valet independently confirmed to Campaign Desk that “everything you saw on Letterman was real.”
As to the charge that the White House called CNN in an attempt to discredit Letterman: Mistrial, owing to disappearance of witness. When repeatedly contacted by Campaign Desk, the White House neither confirmed nor denied whether it had spoken to CNN Tuesday afternoon concerning the Letterman footage.
As to the charge that CNN inaccurately reported that Letterman had edited the videos on multiple occasions and has yet to explain, to Campaign Desk or anyone else, how it repeatedly botched this one: Guilty, guilty, guilty.
Megan Mahoney, a spokeswoman for CNN, did tell Campaign Desk yesterday that CNN “called the Letterman show at 5 p.m. [Tuesday] to let them know that we were mistaken in our report.” Specifically, Mahoney said, the White House never informed CNN that the clip aired on Letterman “was edited video.” (CNN told The Washington Post that a “misunderstanding among staff” contributed to the problem.)
As of 1:00 p.m., CNN had still failed to respond to the following specific questions from Campaign Desk: “To clarify: Does CNN care to comment on how a mistake like this was made considering it seems there was follow-up reporting done between the first mention at around 11:50 and the second mention closer to 2 p.m. both of which suggest different types of editing?”
“Also, did any conversation take place between the White House and CNN between 10:30 and 2:00 on Tuesday concerning the Letterman footage? Essentially, did CNN misreport a conversation or did CNN just make a mistake that a conversation had taken place?”
The White House — any White House — dodging questions is nothing new. More disturbing is CNN’s apparent disregard in this case for the public’s right to the true story. For a news organization, that obligation ought to trump everything else — including any internal embarrassment over missing the bucket completely on what should have been a slam dunk.
Update 04/01/2004 3:30 p.m.: At 11:52 a.m. today, CNN anchor Daryn Kagan offered yet another elaboration, stating that the White House did not ever call CNN to allege the tape was faked and served up an apology — not to viewers, but to Letterman. But an apology is not an explanation, and there have to be a few hundreds of thousands of baffled CNN devotees still wondering how you get something like that wrong twice in two hours.
Thomas Lang was a writer at CJR Daily.