Earlier this morning (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), in a post primarily about the Associated Press's whitewashing of President Barack Obama's quote of the year acknowledging that his multi-year guarantee — "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health clinic care plan, period" — was, ahem, "not ... accurate" (Obama's words), I noted that the related web page for NBC's "Today" show followed the AP's lead by claiming that Obama's original promise and not the admission was the quote of the year.
The video clip present at that same web page is both funny and sad. It's funny, because Tamron Hall began her report by ignorantly asserting that Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is "everyone's favorite mayor from the Northeast." It's sad, because like the AP, NBC's video truncated Obama's actual November 14 admission and let it slide without further comment, effectively giving what Ford said about his drinking and use of drugs more weight than Obama's admission that he lied to the American people for years. The clip follows the jump:
Toronto is not in "the Northeast" ("a geographical region of the United States bounded to the north by Canada, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Southern United States, and to the west by the Midwestern United States").
NBC chose to play quotes 7, 6, 4, and 1 from the list compiled by Fred Shapiro at Yale. It decided that Republican Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana's statement (#6) — "We've got to stop being the Stupid Party; and I'm serious, it's time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults" — was worthy of airing. But, among others, it deemed that Director of National Intelligence James Klapper's confirmation that he in essence gave false testimony in a Senate hearing about NSA collecting mountains of data on the activities of everyday American citizens — "I responded in what I thought was the most truthful or least untruthful manner, by saying, 'No'" — was not.
As to Obama's quote, here is the portion NBC played:
"With respect to the pledge I made that if you like your plan, you can keep it ... the way I put that forward unequivocally ended up not being accurate."
Here is the full quote from the White House's web site:
With respect to the pledge I made that if you like your plan, you can keep it, I think -- and I’ve said in interviews -- that there is no doubt that the way I put that forward unequivocally ended up not being accurate.
As was the case with AP's truncation noted earlier this morning, the elimination of “there is no doubt” from what Obama actually said makes his statement appear less emphatic. NBC's Today reporter also failed to say that Obama's quote was #1 (though it was flagged as such in the video), and did not otherwise further discuss it, instead also noting that statements by Pope Francis and Edward Snowden also made the Top Ten.
There's also an interesting disconnect between the video and the transcript which accompanies it. The following is at the very end of the transcript:
President Obama got mixed up.
Sure he did.
The video ends before that statement is uttered. I wonder which fool on the Today set made it?
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
