CNN anchor Jake Tapper on Thursday said journalists should condemn the State Department's editing of an exchange between its former spokesperson and a Fox News reporter — regardless of their personal biases.
"Well, that looks like a completely cut-and-dried case of censorship. They took something they didn’t like and pretended it didn’t happen," Tapper said on WMAL radio's
"Mornings on the Mall" show.
"People in the media whose personal leanings might be sympathetic to President Obama and to President Obama’s State Department should not let their personal bias get in the way of the fact that this is a true outrage," Tapper said in comments
reported by The Washington Times.
If members of the press who are more friendly to the Obama administration don't speak up they might be sorry when there's someone they don't like as much in the White House, Tapper said.
"If they allow and accept this happening today, then they cannot complain when, you know, hypothetically, President [Donald] Trump and Secretary of State Omarosa do the same thing," he said, referring to Omarosa Manigault, a former contestant on Trump's reality show "The Apprentice."
"You have to complain consistently," Tapper said.
Current State Department spokesman John Kirby admitted Wednesday that official video of a December 2013 press briefing had been purposely edited to remove a conversation between then spokesperson Jen Psaki and Fox News' James Rosen over whether the department had lied to the media about backchannel negotiations during the Iran nuclear deal.
"You are on a need-to-know basis, and you apparently don't need to know," Tapper said on his CNN show
"The Lead" on Thursday afternoon. "The State Department admitting it lied about covering a lie by
doctoring a key piece of video. Three lies in there, if you're keeping track. Why? Because there are no rules against lying to the American public."
Kirby said the person who edited the video received a request by phone, but does not remember who made the call.
Psaki, who is now the White House communications director, tweeted she never made such an order.
But Mediaite's Alex Griswold noted on Thursday that Psaki's tweet said she never ordered editing of her briefing transcript — while the editing was done not to the transcript, but the video itself.
"It's hard not to read Psaki's tweet as a carefully crafted attempt to avoid answering the central question: did she order her subordinates to edit a video to hide the fact that she strongly implied the State Department lies to reporters?" Griswold wrote. "Likewise, it’s hard not to reach the conclusion that she wouldn’t be avoiding that question unless she knew the public wouldn’t like the answer."
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