The anti-Bush media strikes again

Speaking of patience, on October 25th Bush made the following statement: "We're making it clear that America's patient [sic] is not unlimited."  Yes, that's what he said--in fact that's straight from the official White House transcript, including the [sic].

When I searched for this quote on Google the first hit was for an article on NPR's web site, and the excerpted text that Google displayed for the NPR page showed the "patient" gaffe exactly as Bush had said it.  But when I clicked through to the NPR page as it actually is today, I found that NPR had corrected the quote so that it now contained the word "patience" instead, like a normal, educated, literate human being might say it.  The fact that Google had cached the "patient" text means that NPR initially published the correct quote, but later decided that they should go back and cover for Bush's idiocy.

There goes that liberal media again--always trying to make Bush look bad.

This is nothing new or even uncommon.  The fine folks at FAIR caught the CBS and NBC nightly news shows carefully editing Bush's response to a question about whether he was frustrated with the level of violence in Baghdad, in a way that made him sound like not quite the tone-deaf nincompoop he actually is.  The jarringly offensive part of Bush's response was this: "Sometimes I'm happy. This is -- but war is not a time of joy."  Both CBS and NBC were careful to omit this part of Bush's response from their reporting, but CBS actually went the extra mile of dropping just these two sentences from Bush's answer, accurately quoting what he'd said both immediately before and immediately after as though it was a single, contiguous quote; the offending words simply disappeared.  It makes you wonder if Winston Smith is working for CBS these days.

And back in 2003, after reporting Bush's statement that the US gave Saddam Hussein "a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in," the Washington Post said that "The president's assertion that the war began because Iraq did not admit inspectors appeared to contradict the events leading up to war this spring."  This would be roughly like the Post saying that "The president's assertion that the sun hasn't risen for the last decade appears to contradict the observed series of sunrises over the past ten years."  It's hard to imagine a more bald-faced lie on Bush's part--or a more mealy-mouthed way for the Post to present it.  Salon has a good summary of this particular repeated lie of Bush's, and the media's ongoing dedication to ignoring and underplaying it for him.

So the "liberal" (and supposedly adversarial) media won't even publish Bush's actual statements if they feel it would reflect poorly on him, and will go so far as to edit and correct them for him if necessary--despite the fact that the most basic standards of journalism require them to provide accurate quotes.  That's a level of servility you wouldn't be surprised to find in a dictatorship.

Comments

[RD]

Thanks for your thoughtful post. I wanted to pass along what you wrote to some friends but it was a bit long. So by taking out some of your words I feel I did a great job capturing your meaning in the following summary:

Bush is a normal, educated, literate human being. The fact is nothing new. The fine folks CBS and NBC carefully [quote] Bush: "This war is not a time of joy." Bush's response went the extra mile.

Please keep posting, I really like your view of Bush and the fine job he is doing for our great country.

[John Caruso]

RD: In exactly the spirit of your own comment, I can say that you've produced an insightful, penetratingly accurate summary of my intentions. I'm glad someone out there understands me.