CNN Gives Obama a Pass Amidst Major Coverage of His Leno Interview
CNN had extensive coverage on Wednesday of President Obama's interview
with NBC's Jay Leno, but only two CNN hosts actually challenged some of
the President's claims during the 11 different news hours that played
clips of the interview.
One of Obama's statements went completely unchallenged for the entire
day. The President said that "we don't need a huge government, but we
need government doing some basic things," in reference to
infrastructure. He added that the country needs to "make sure we don't
waste money."
No
CNN figure even asked if Obama's government has not been "huge" or
limited to doing "basic things" or has not wasted money during his
tenure as President. Nowhere did anchors bring up his massive stimulus
plan and some of the controversial projects that received stimulus
money, and taxpayer-funded failed green energy companies.
CNN spent over 21 minutes on Wednesday just playing clips from the
President's interview with Leno, although a whopping 13 minutes came
during the 9 and 10 a.m. ET hours of Newsroom. The 10 a.m. ET hour alone
featured seven minutes and 34 seconds of the Leno interview.
However, CNN missed a number of gaffes the President made in the interview that were pointed out
by NewsBusters, including his claim that "the odds of people dying in a
terrorist attack obviously are still a lot lower than in a car
accident, unfortunately."
CNN never played that clip. Only The Lead host Jake Tapper
even broached the subject of terrorism from the interview, when he
questioned State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki about the President's
decision to close embassies due to the supposedly high threat of
terrorism.
"How much concern does the Obama administration have that by closing
all these embassies and consulates, the U.S. may appear to be running
scared from the region, feeding into this criticism we have heard from
some hawks about waning U.S. influence, the suggestion that nobody is
daunted by the U.S. anymore? Was that a concern at all when this was
issued?" Tapper asked.
Tapper was also the only CNN figure to bring up Obama's statement that
"We don't have a domestic spying program." An incredulous Tapper noted,
"First of all, obviously we do have a domestic spying program through
the FBI and whatever."
And then only Tapper and Wolf Blitzer, host of The Situation Room,
asked if Obama's 2012 opponent Mitt Romney was even somewhat right
about Russia, given the President's criticism of the country in his
interview and his cancelation of a meeting with Russian president
Vladimir Putin.
"Didn't Governor Romney have a point about Russia being if not the
number one, at least a geopolitical foe? Your own account, you call this
a roller coaster. It's been a very -- a relationship in some trouble,"
Tapper posed to Psaki. Blitzer asked in the next hour, "was Romney right
when he called Russia America's number one geopolitical foe?"
Another Obama gaffe that CNN played twice but did not correct is his
claim that Putin "headed up the KGB." As NewsBusters' Geoff Dickens pointed out, the Washington Post back in 2003 reported
that Putin was not the organization's head, but "spent 17 years as a
mid-level agent in the Soviet KGB's foreign intelligence wing, rising
only to the rank of lieutenant colonel."
The President also incorrectly claimed that the cities of Charleston,
Savannah, and Jacksonville – all of them on the Atlantic coast in their
respective states of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida – were "ports
all along the Gulf [of Mexico]." CNN ignored that gaffe on Wednesday.
