Who was Morning Joe protecting: the sensitive ears of its viewers, or Hillary Clinton?
During a discussion of the death of the feisty and fearless reporter Michael Hastings, Morning Joe bleeped out Joe Scarborough's reading from an email from Hastings to Philippe Reines, Hillary's personal spokesman during her Secretary of State tenure. Hastings had accused Reines of "b---s---" answers on the State Department's handling of Benghazi. The extended bleeping wasn't simply of the offending word, but of Hastings' entire sentence, so listeners never learned the thrust of his accusation. View the video after the jump.
The sentence was "disappeared" not only from the video, but from the show's transcript as well. Since Morning Joe's been on a seven-second delay ever since Scarborough dropped an f-bomb in 2008, it should have been possible to bleep the bad word while giving viewers the gist of Hastings' accusation. So again, who was being protected here?
Note: here's a [language warning] link to the entire exchange between Hastings and Reines, during which among other things Hillary's spox tells Hastings to "f--- off."
JOE SCARBOROUGH: And in a memorable interview with Philippe Reines, who was Hillary Clinton's spokesperson. Moms, dads, cover your kids' ears. Um, he was, after Benghazi, Hastings had an aggressive line of questioning and it angered Reines, who said why do you bother to ask questions you've already decided you know the answers to? [Six seconds of silence follow, during which Scarborough reads Hastings' response]. So talk about a guy saying that to the Secretary of State's spokesperson, a guy that just, again, was hardcharging and fearless.
