Ed Gillespie, a Republican big shot now serving as Counselor to President Bush in the White House, just blasted NBC News at Grover Norquist's legendary "Wednesday Meeting," the weekly conclave of leading conservative activists in Washington DC.
As Cable Gamers know, the White House has been at war with NBC News since May 18, when reporter Richard Engel mugged President George W. Bush, using sneaky editing.
NBC is sticking to its unfair and unbalanced position, as Brian Williams made clear on "Nightly News" on Monday. Meanwhile, of course, such not-ready-for-broadcast TV hit men as Keith Olbermann are actively dumping on the Bush White House.
But now Gillespie is fighting back. At the Grover meeting--150 or so folks, representing the top grassroots leaders and representatives of groups around the country--Gillespie joked that MSM reporters, siding, of course, with NBC, are sucking up. MSMers are "talking to Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews like they’re Edward R. Murrow," Gillespie quipped.
And then Ron Kessler, the always-interesting reporter for Newsmax.com, asked Gillespie, "Will the White House cut off NBC?" To which the White House man answered drily, "John Yang is a decent reporter." In so doing, of course, Gillespie deftly left out any mention of the rest of NBC News. Then he added, thinking aloud, "Maybe [NBC] can have an interview, but only on the condition that [NBC] air it in its entirety."
In fairness--OK, more like pseudo-fairness-- NBC has posted the entire Bush interview on its website. But as Gillespie noted, a web-posting is not the same as running the edited version twice on national TV. Meanwhile, those who wish to see the White House position in detail can click here to see the full text of Gillespie's angry May 19 letter to NBC News president Steve Capus, as well as supporting materials.
But then Gillespie this morning continued, "If you look at the editing [of the Bush interview]... if a presidential campaign ran such a snippet...NBC would run a fact checker thing, and hammer [the presidential campaign], for deceptive advertising." Pow!
This White House vs. NBC controversy isn't going away, folks. If NBC News can get away with ambush editing today, it will get even worse in the next few months, as NBC and MSNBC and the rest of the MSM go all-out to elect Barack Obama.
