White House Vs. NBC

The White House is accusing NBC News of "deceptively" editing an interview that Richard Engel did with President Bush, but it also takes the network to task for a variety of gripes.

Bush adviser Ed Gillespie sent a letter to network news president Steve Capus, and the memo was posted on the White House Website.

Much of the letter concerns Engel's question to Bush over his speech in Israel last week, which many Democrats took as an attack on Barack Obama.

In the interview, Engel asked Bush, "You said that negotiating with Iran is pointless, and then you went further. You said that it was appeasement. Were you referring to Senator Barack Obama?"

The White House says that the edited segment made it seem as if Bush was agreeing with Engel's characterization of the interview when it really wasn't.

Gillespie wrote to Capus, "NBC's selective editing of the President's response is clearly intended to give viewers the impression that he agreed with Engel's characterization of his remarks when he explicitly challenged it.  Furthermore, omitted the references to al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas and ignored the clarifying point in the President's follow-up response that U.S. policy is to require Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment program before coming to the table, not that "negotiating with Iran is pointless" and amounts to "appeasement.""

Gillespie also complains about NBC's 2006 characterization of the war in Iraq as a "civil war," and gets a final dig in at its coverage.

He writes, "Mr. Capus, I'm sure you don't want people to conclude that there is really no distinction between the "news" as reported on NBC and the "opinion" as reported on MSNBC, despite the increasing blurring of those lines. I welcome your response to this letter, and hope it is one that reassures your broadcast network's viewers that blatantly partisan talk show hosts like Christopher Matthews and Keith Olbermann at MSNBC don't hold editorial sway over the NBC network news division."

Here's NBC's response, via Mediabistro: "Richard Engel's interview with President Bush has been available, unedited, in its entirety, for the past day, on our website. Our reporting accurately reflects the interview. Just as the White House does not participate in the editorial process at the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal or USA Today, NBC News, as part of a free press in a free society, makes its own editorial decisions."

Here's Engel's interview, as featured on "Today":