Libya Takes Backseat to Fluff in NBC Obama Infomercial
During a 20-minute interview with President Obama aired on Thursday's NBC Rock Center, host Brian Williams devoted
a total of 1 minute 36 seconds to the subject of the terrorist attack
in Libya. At the same time, four segments of soft coverage of the
President's re-election campaign received a combined total of 2 minutes
19 seconds.
The promotional fluff included the President stopping by a pizza shop
in Iowa (1 min 3 sec), appearing on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno (30
sec), having singer Katy Perry perform at a rally in Las Vegas (31 sec),
and him picking up some donuts at a Krispy Kreme in Tampa (15 sec).
As the MRC's Brent Baker earlier reported,
when Williams finally asked Obama about Libya, the Nightly News anchor
portrayed the President as a victim of bad intelligence: "Have you been
happy with the intelligence, especially in our post 9-11 world? The
assessment of your intelligence community, as we stand here, is that it
still was a spontaneous terrorist attack and were you happy with what
you were able to learn as this unfolded?"
In the first portion of the multi-part interview, Williams was puzzled as to why the race was so close, given all of Obama's supposed accomplishments and advantages. In a later part, Williams urged Obama to hit Republicans on abortion and then lobbed softballs from the left.
While promoting the Obama profile on multiple NBC News programs,
Williams repeatedly noted that the same interview offer had been
extended to Mitt Romney. If the Governor takes him up on it, one wonders
if the conversation will be anywhere near as friendly.