ABC on Tuesday night decided to showcase one guy yelling at Mitt Romney, as if it proved how media-liberal distortions of Mitt Romney's 'I like to fire people' remark will surely hurt him and follow him to South Carolina. Reporter David Muir showed video of Romney, in the middle of a crowd, holding a baby.
'But if you rewind the tape and play up the sound,' Muir explained from Manchester in setting up a re-play. Viewers then heard the voice of one man shouting: 'Are you going to fire the baby? Are you going to fire the baby?' ABC helpfully put those words on screen.
Muir contended 'these are words that are going to follow Mitt Romney beyond New Hampshire right into South Carolina' where 'the jobs picture' is 'even worse.'
From the 6:30 PM EST feed of ABC's World News on Tuesday, January 10:
DAVID MUIR: ...The last 24 hours, under fire for those words – 'I like being able to fire people.' Of course, he was talking about health insurance companies and Americans being able to get rid of them if they're not happy with them. But I wanted to show you an image today. One image, two stories behind it. They were at a polling place in Manchester, the governor and his wife, holding a baby. Very much an image you'd expect from the front-runner. But if you rewind the tape and play up the sound:
MAN'S VOICE: Are you going to fire the baby? Are you going to fire the baby?
MUIR: Those shouts there, 'are you going to fire the baby?' These are words that are going to follow Mitt Romney beyond New Hampshire right into South Carolina. And the bigger question is, how will those words sit with the voters in South Carolina, more of a blue-collar state, the jobs picture even worse off there.
- Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here [1] to follow Brent Baker on Twitter.