My brother finds and links to a Campaign Desk report that says that CNN is taking the fall for the Letterman Yawning Boy fiasco in which they falsely reported that the White House claimed the tape was doctored.
In yesterday’s coda to the Yawning Boy saga, I forgot to mention an illuminating report from Thomas Lang on the campaigndesk.org Web site on Friday.
Lang
arguably gets to the bottom of the question of why CNN ever reported
that the White House called to cast doubts on the accuracy of the
yawning boy video. This has caused much huffing and puffing amongst
administration critics.Lang quotes CNN spokesman Matt
Furman thusly: “When we aired the Letterman clip Tuesday morning a
producer in the CNN White House unit called our national desk to raise
an issue about the potential authenticity of the tape. That
conversation was relayed among several people in the newsroom and by
the time it made it to [news anchor] Daryn Kagan it had gone through
several people in the news room and unfortunately [the on-air version]
became ‘The White House has said the tape is not authentic.'”And speaking of yawning boy, reader Stephen Stackwick e-mailed me yesterday with this comment:
“Interesting that W. had time to scribble a note to Tyler but families of KIA servicemen get (duplicate) form letters.”
Stackwick was referring to last Tuesday’s Washington Post story by David Maraniss who told of one Iowa family who lost their son getting two identical form letters from Bush.
As a paid-up beliver in what the British call the ‘Cock-up Theory of Life’–the belief that Murphy’s Law explains much more variance than do Evil Conspiracy Theories, I guess I’m prepared to believe this, although it sure seems awful sloppy to have a procedure in place that lets errors like this go on the air.
You should also read National Review. Its never too late to learn to be right.