-By Warner Todd Huston
In reporting the speech by Gov. Sarah Palin in Ohio today, CNN’s Political Ticker tried to spin her question about Obama’s coal comment as old news when it clearly isn’t. Palin asked why we are just now finding out about the interview where Barack Obama said he had hoped to bankrupt the coal industry but CNN termed this interview and Obama’s startling admission as “months-old coal comments” in an attempt to soften the blow to Ohio and Pennsylvania voters. The Political Ticker said that since the San Francisco Chronicle had these comments on its website for nine months, the news of Obama’s quote was no big deal. But this is a misleading claim.
As we know from P.J. Gladnick’s NewsBusters report, Obama admitted that his intention for new coal plants was to slap so many fees, regulations and taxes on any new venture that it would “bankrupt” the company that tries it.
Palin, stumping Sunday in Ohio’s coal country, brought this interview up at a campaign appearance in Marietta, Ohio. “Why is the audio tape just now surfacing?,” she asked the shocked crowd.
CNN scoffed at Palin’s question and tried to spin the story away as “old news.”
Contrary to her attempts to portray a media cover-up, audio and video recordings of Obama’s January 17 sit-down with the Chronicle editorial board have been freely available online for more than nine months.
However, we know this to be misleading based on the fact that, while the audio was available, the paper did not report these quotes from Obama in its January story. NewsBuster Tom Blumer did a search and quickly discovered that Obama’s anti-coal comments were not reported by the paper that conducted the interview.
The problem with CNN’s spin here is that these are really not “months-old comments” in the strictest sense that we were all made familiar with Obama’s anti-coal comments back in January. Since January, the San Francisco Chronicle has steadfastly left these incendiary comments entirely out of its coverage.
CNN’s cynical spin is simply misleading and seems meant to give cover to the Obama campaign on this embarrassing revelation. After all, even if they are “months-old comments,” does that make the fact that Obama wants to bankrupt electric producing coal plants any less outrageous or important? Or, for that matter, any less relevant to this election? Whether Obama said it just yesterday or said it 9 months ago is immaterial to the debate here.
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
Interesting tactic since Alan Colmes played the same line with Tito the builder when he accused the MSM of a cover up. http://michellemalkin.com/2008/10/31/tito-the-builder-brings-down-the-house/ Colmes attempted to claim this information was on the internet for all to see. So what we have here is the MSM claiming they didn’t cover anything up from the obvious lack of reporting because the kernel of truth was there to be found, somewhere. The MSM is frequently playing the cat and mouse game line they get to emphasize what they think is important for the public to know, they get to make the decisions and we must go along with it. That’s not reporting called journalism, that’s a tactic of propaganda. You know something is propaganda when the story line can’t stand up to the sum of the facts. Propaganda can only be successful by smoothering all dissenting views and facts.
Once again the reporting by all who say the word “bankrupt” is incorrect. Just like calling Obama a socialist.
The video above did not mention bankrupt so why that is germain to this I don’t know. If, as reported above “Obama admitted that his intention for new coal plants was to slap so many fees, regulations and taxes on any new venture that it would “bankrupt” the company that tries it” is not saying bankrupt the coal industry he is saying bankrupt any new company.
Why are the republicans taking words out of context and put their own spin on it? Of course I know the answer but look, there are people out there that do not read and are uniformed and when they hear things like this they believe it. Trust me when I say I have a friend and his wife, both college graduates and successful in their field until retirement yet they do not understand what the word socialism is.
Wake up America, we a allowing ourselves to be duped by both parties with this mud slinging while the real issues are not getting accomplished.
Sure they put the raw video on their web page. But neither the Times nor any other paper wrote about his anti-capitalist comments. The Times conveniently found that it wouldn’t fit in their written story. They neither highlighted it nor let any other paper know he said it.
In essence, the LATimes buried the video and hoped no one would notice.