Bad Media! Couric Gun Violence Documentary “Deceptively Edited”‘

Posted by Tina

A documentary on gun violence hosted by Katie Couric was apparently edited to deceptively place people in the documentary in a negative light. The producer claims he didn’t intend, “to make anyone look bad.” He’s got to be either incredibly biased or ignorant…which do you suspect? See video at the link. The audio in question is at the 21:48 mark:

Couric can be heard in the interview asking activists from the group, “If there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorists from purchasing a gun?”

The documentary then shows the activists sitting silently for nine awkward seconds, unable to provide an answer. It then cuts to the next scene.

However, raw audio of the interview between Katie Couric and the activists provided to the Washington Free Beacon shows the scene was deceptively edited. Instead of silence, Couric’s question is met immediately with answers from the activists. A back and forth between a number of the league’s members and Couric over the issue of background checks proceeds for more than four minutes after the original question is asked.

The documentary, “Under the Gun,” has been criticized and labeled as “dishonest politicking in the guise of media coverage,” “loose with the facts,” and “a full-length assault on guns and the Second Amendment” by those in the gun community. Phillip Van Cleve, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense league, said the edited segment was “unbelievable and extremely unprofessional.”

Why do they continue to do this in this age of alternative media? Because there will always be those who will buy into the deception. Pretty sleazy journalism for a so-called professional outfit.

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28 Responses to Bad Media! Couric Gun Violence Documentary “Deceptively Edited”‘

  1. Pie Guevara says:

    My goodness, a left wing liberal “journalist” purposefully editing their product to deceive. Can anyone say “60 Minutes.”

    • dewster says:

      Best one that comes to my mind is that Democrat video of Planned Parenthood selling Baby parts where the film makers were prosecuted for a falsely edited film.

      Oh yea that was not a Democrat film.

      • Pie Guevara says:

        “Falsely” edited? Prosecuted? What a weird and twisted world you live in Dupester. Go sell some baby parts and get back to me you sick moron.

  2. Chris says:

    Looks like the director took some lessons from James O’Keefe.

    I will never understand people who think they can lie for their cause, or who think they wil get away with it in this day and age. The director’s response is nonsense and a giant dodge. This was absolutely wrong.

  3. J. Soden says:

    Always entertaining when media presstitutes like Couric get caught.
    “Documentaries” from Lefties are just like the climate change clowns – they start with their preconceived notions and change the facts to fit what they want the result to be.

  4. Libby says:

    And it hasn’t occurred to you that maybe the “raw audio” was edited?

    • More Common Sense says:

      Again, Useful Idiot! The left loves peopel like you!

    • Chris says:

      I considered it, Libby–the Washington Free Beacon is typically a cesspool–but the director has already apologized for his “mistake.” This was undeniably an example of a liberal director manipulating the facts for his political agenda.

  5. Tina says:

    What ? With voice impersonators?

  6. Tina says:

    Chris weighs in with a typical invective, “cesspool.” Yet the director of the intentionally deceptive piece has “already apologized” so, Couric and company are excused from such invective even though it was “undeniably an example of a liberal director manipulating the facts for his [her] political agenda .

    It’s not the first time the MSM has been intentionally deceitful or manipulative of facts. This happens often.

    I’d like to know why the lower profile conservative blog is a “cesspool” and the MSM generally considered a reliable trusted sources of information that, “ooops, made a mistake.”

    • dewster says:

      Best one that comes to my mind is that Democrat video of Planned Parenthood selling Baby parts where the film makers were prosecuted for a falsely edited film.

      Oh yea that was not a Democrat film.

    • Chris says:

      Tina: “Yet the director of the intentionally deceptive piece has “already apologized” so, Couric and company are excused from such invective even though it was “undeniably an example of a liberal director manipulating the facts for his [her] political agenda .”

      I have no idea how you got from my comment that I was “excusing” anyone; the only point of bringing up the apology was to show Libby that yes, this deceptive edit did happen. I even put the word “mistake” in quotation marks to make it clear that this deception was intentional. There is no excusing it. Couric may not have bore culpability for the deceptive editing, but she does bear responsibility for standing by the director’s ridiculous explanation for his deception. There is no excuse here; this was wrong.

  7. Libby says:

    Don’t gloat. We, at least, come clean when outed. Now, how did it go with the Planned Parenthood manipulators? Let me see if I remember.

    • Pie Guevara says:

      Clean like national security disaster, serial liar, misogynist rapist enabler like Hillary Clinton?

      Squeaky clean.

    • Tina says:

      You come clean when outed? Ha!

      If I recall Dan Rather dug in his heels and probably refuses to this day to the fact that his stories were built on manipulation and forgery of documents.

      As for PP, media (and the justice department) stepped in to provide cover and dismiss the actual words uttered by PP personnel and at least one law that I think was being broken (Highlighted below). “The Bad, Worse, and Ugly: Media Coverage of Planned Parenthood’s Organ Harvesting Scandal” illustrates the way it’s done:

      At 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning, a pro-life group released two videos showing Planned Parenthood executive Deborah Nucatola munching on a salad and sipping red wine while discussing the harvesting of organs from babies killed by abortion. One was a nearly nine-minute edited video of the nearly three-hour discussion. The other was the unedited discussion.

      Because of the graphic nature of the discussion — Nucatola specifically discusses altering abortion procedures to procure hearts, brains, lungs, and livers from the babies whose lives Planned Parenthood ends by abortion — the video immediately lit up social media. Unlike most significant stories about major hot-button social issues, however, no major media reported on the news until 4:30 p.m. that afternoon. Some are still working on (or working on hiding) their coverage of the story. Let’s look at some of the major media outlets and how they did.

      Washington Post

      The first story out of the gate from major mainstream media outlet came from the Washington Post. It was originally headlined: “Undercover video shows Planned Parenthood exec discussing organ harvesting,” and it was remarkably fair to both Planned Parenthood and those who oppose the harvesting of organs from children killed in abortion.

      However, by the time the story appeared on page one of the Washington Post, it had been significantly altered. You can get the gist from the new headline: “Undercover video shows Planned Parenthood official discussing fetal organs used for research.”

      You’ve heard of the journalism adage: “If it bleeds, it leads”? Well, how about: “There, that doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Probably don’t even need to read this article, do you!”

      The executive is downgraded to an official. The wine she drank as she discussed how good Planned Parenthood has gotten at procuring hearts, livers, and lungs is completely excised. In both versions, Nucatola’s clear statements about crushing baby bodies above or below their organs is given distance with a journalistic “apparently.”

      The revised story introduced additional errors, including that Nucatola was not caught “explicitly talking about selling organs” (she was), and claiming that Planned Parenthood doesn’t profit from these organ sales, even though Nucatola specifically talks about making more money than breaking even.

      Associated Press

      The Associated Press national social issues reporter, David Crary, got his story out just over 13 hours after the video broke. His headline gives a preview of the euphemism pile-on he’ll use: “Covert video targets Planned Parenthood fetal-parts policy.”

      His lede practically begs you to stop reading:

      Anti-abortion activists on Tuesday released an undercover video showing a senior Planned Parenthood official discussing the disposition of parts from aborted fetuses.

      The activists contended the video reveals illegalities, but Planned Parenthood said the activity in question was the legal, not-for-profit donation of fetal tissue to research firms.

      Crary didn’t even bother to promote his own story, for whatever reason. He wrote nine stories about the Komen Foundation’s attempts to extricate itself from funding Planned Parenthood, including breaking the story. He wrote a total of two stories about Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia serial murderer and abortionist. You can read this piece for more information on Crary and the Associated Press’ trouble covering abortion, but perhaps of note for this story:

      The Komen team described him as a ‘Planned Parenthood ally,’ who had ‘gushed’ over Planned Parenthood in a February 2011 article featuring Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards. ‘The article was essentially a rehashed Planned Parenthood press release,’ Handel writes. He’s described as ‘sympathetic’ to Richards and ‘deeply biased’ in favor of Planned Parenthood. Komen’s media person says, ‘she had never spoken to a national reporter who was so openly biased.’

      Reuters

      Joining the Associated Press in the “we’re not even trying to be fair” category was Reuters, whose first piece on the scandal was literally headlined, and I want to emphasize I’m not being hyperbolic for effect but accurately conveying the headline: “Planned Parenthood slams secret video as false portrayal of fetus tissue program.”

      This story came out nearly 14 hours after the story broke, and reads like a Planned Parenthood press release would if Planned Parenthood had less regard for its reputation:

      Planned Parenthood said on Tuesday a secretly recorded video that surfaced on the Internet falsely portrayed the reproductive health group’s participation in the sale of tissue and body parts from aborted fetuses.

      The non-profit organization said the video had been heavily edited and recorded by a group that was established to damage its reputation. It said in a statement the video “falsely portrays Planned Parenthood’s participation in tissue donation programs that support lifesaving scientific research.”

      Nowhere in the story (written by Jon Herskovitz, with additional reporting by Patrick Enright and David Bailey in Minneapolis, and editing by Jonathan Oatis and Toni Reinhold) do we we learn that the group put out a complete, unedited, nearly three-hour video at the same exact time as the edited eight-minute version. The double claim of falsehood provided by Reuters on behalf of Planned Parenthood in the first two paragraphs is never substantiated, although a meager attempt is made to repeat Planned Parenthood talking points in the final paragraphs.

      Newsweek

      The Weekly Standard‘s John McCormack provided the journalistic service of exposing precisely what talking points Planned Parenthood was sending out to reporters in an attempt to quash or reframe the story. The documents can be found here. One of the pieces of information Planned Parenthood’s public relations firm sent out suggested that David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress, the group that performed the undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood, should not be trusted because he has “written articles for opposition outlet The Weekly Standard and Human Life Review.”

      The Weekly Standard is a large, respected weekly magazine whose writers include some of the best writers working today, including P.J. O’Rourke, Matt Labash, Andrew Ferguson, Jonathan Last, Vic Matus, Christopher Caldwell, and the dashing Mark Hemingway. The idea that having written a sole article for the publication would be disqualifying is laughable to the extreme. And yet…

      Newsweek‘s story, authored by Polly Mosendz, shows the influence Planned Parenthood’s backgrounder had on her journalism:

      The center’s leader, David Daleiden, has written anti-abortion literature for The Weekly Standard and is referenced on the pro-life website of Jill Stanek. Files uploaded by Daleiden to Scribd include ‘Prayers for the day,’ which Daleiden describes as ‘one way to structure your prayer life throughout the day that some people may find helpful.’

      Though Daleiden’s organization shares a name with the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Medical Progress, a spokeswoman for the institute told Newsweek the groups are ‘totally separate organizations’ who have ‘never been affiliated.’ This is all to say, the video was not made by a purely scientific center, despite the organization’s name, nor in a purely objective manner.

      I joke about journalists being hostile to Christians, but I’m not sure I’ve seen someone’s prayer life used in an attempt to discredit someone. I’m almost impressed. Horrified, mostly, but also kind of impressed at how anti-religious the journalism is. Also, way to regurgitate Planned Parenthood talking points! You’re on your way to the big Andrea Mitchell-leagues!

      Daily Beast

      I don’t think the Daily Beast has gotten around to profiling Deborah Nucatola, the woman who talked about “crushing” babies’ bodies in such a way as to harvest their “lungs,” and “livers,” and “hearts,” and what not, but they did accept their Planned Parenthood marching orders for writing hit pieces about Daleiden. Here’s Samantha Allen’s version of Media Matters for America’s version of Planned Parenthood’s hit on Daleiden.

      CNN

      CNN’s first piece on the Planned Parenthood scandal is actually a really good and fair story, in my initial read. It presents alternate points of view without siding with one or the other or accepting anyone’s claims at face value.

      I did get a kick out of the accompanying video, which begins, “In this heavily and selectively edited video …” What’s funny about this is that 100 percent of video news reports not involving live guests are very “heavily and selectively edited.” Because that’s how you do broadcast journalism. We don’t see journalists introduce their reports by noting that fact, usually. (continues)

      You’re side is mostly covered by media spin. Occasionally the errors and manipulation are so egregious they cannot be adequately helped. That’s when Robert Redford types step in to assure that future generations get their minds right.

  8. dewster says:

    All MSM is a bunch of crap. Propaganda for donors. Who watches that crap anyway?

    Did not see it nor will I watch it.

  9. Pie Guevara says:

    The Dupester stuffs his head in the sand. Like no one saw that coming.

  10. Pie Guevara says:

    Katie Couric regrets her poor decision!!!

    Well, duh, now that she has been outed as a propagandist left-wing dirt bag posing as a “journalist.” Katie, it is time for you to retire.

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