Behold Your Media: CNN's Paula Zahn, ABC, MSNBC All Push Bogus Hillary "Drawl" Story
March 6, 2007 -- 11:37 AM EST // // Post a Comment
Incredible. CNN's Paula Zahn, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, and ABC News have all now covered the Hillary "drawl" story that Matt Drudge pushed yesterday. And guess how many of these shows shared with their viewers the simple context that would have revealed just how dishonest the Drudge story actually was? Exactly zero.
It's almost as if these big news orgs are looking to Drudge as their de facto assignment editor. Channeling Mark Halperin, It's almost as if their motto could be:
Matt Drudge Rules Our World -- Because We Happily Let Him Do Just That.
As detailed here yesterday, Drudge and the winger shock troops were out in full force yesterday pushing an audiotape of Hillary adopting a southern drawl in Alabama, something which allegedly proved what a phony Hillary is. But a simple fact check quickly revealed that this audio plucked Hillary's "drawl" quote out of context, making it look as if she'd adopted the language, hokey accent and down-home grammar as her own, when in fact she was quoting a hymn written by someone else.
This info was just way too much for the networks to handle, however. Here are CNN's Paula Zahn and John Roberts, discussing on the drawl and showing a Hillary clip of her quoting the hymn without saying that that's what she was doing:
ZAHN: Out in the open next: a pair of Yankees with Southern accents.(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Don't tell me I'm not coming home when I come to Selma, Alabama.
SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: I don't feel no ways tired.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
CLINTON: I come too far.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZAHN: Not only does running for president seem to change the voice we have become accustomed to. It might even change your clothes -- coming up, even more proof it is a crazy campaign out there already....
ROBERTS: But -- but, you see, Hillary, the knock on her is that she's so scripted, that -- that she's pandering to her constituency. And, when she goes to a place like Selma, Alabama, and she effects a Southern accent, even if it was unintentional -- maybe she just got caught up in the moment -- it -- it adds more fuel to this idea that everything that she does is plotted, and a lot that she does is pandering to a particular audience.
Of course, Hillary the "Yankee" spent many, many years in Arkansas. Remember? And note Roberts' hapless floundering, too -- his assertion that perhaps this was "unintentional" reveals very clearly that he only listened to the audio cherry-picked by Drudge, and never bothered to compare it to the whole speech. Matt Drudge Rules Our World -- Because We Happily Let Him Do Just That.
MSNBC and ABC after the jump.
Here's MSNBC's Chris Matthews, showing Hillary's drawl quote without saying she was quoting someone else's hymn (via Nexis):
MATTHEWS: Let me go - let me - Virginia, you didn`t get to hear Senator Clinton`s speech, so here`s a piece of Hillary Clinton speaking in Selma yesterday.(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON, D-NEW YORK, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And I want to begin by giving praise to the Almighty. "I don`t feel no ways tired."
(APPLAUSE)
"I come too far from where I started from. Nobody told me that the road would be easy."
(APPLAUSE)
I could have listened all afternoon. That pulse and the chair of all the mayors in the country, Mayor Palmer from Trenton, New Jersey.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MATTHEWS: Thank you much...
Later in the program, another guest tried to explain the context, but Matthews cut her off.
And finally, ABC News. During Good Morning America's coverage of the Dems' visit to Alabama yesterday, correspondent Jake Tapper observed (via Nexis) that Hillary "adopted a curious southern drawl during her speech." As Media Matters notes, Tapper later wrote on his blog both that Hillary lived for a long time in Arkansas and that in fact Hillary was quoting someone else. According to Nexis and Media Matters, neither of these facts was mentioned by Tapper on Good Morning America, which of course is seen by far more eyeballs than Tapper's blog is.
Matt Drudge Rules Our World -- Because We Happily Let Him Do Just That:
Update: Slogan slightly revised from earlier versions.