ThinkProgress made an excellent catch today, of the sort that I'm frankly surprised are still available to make, given the increased capacity that the internet lends to the practice of factchecking.
Earlier today, Fox News ran a brief clip show, intimating that viewers were about to see various Obama officials stating that the economic fundamentals were favorable. In fact, that is what the video shows, for the most part: Christina Romer, Larry Summers and Austan Goolsbee, all from this Sunday's morning talk shows. All conform to the stated premise that viewers were about to see comments from "recent interviews this week." However, there was one splice in the clip that featured Joe Biden, stating declaratively, "The fundamentals of our economy are strong."
Fox cut away from Biden awfully quick, and for good reason: the audience was about to unleash a torrent of boos. That's because it wasn't a "recent interview" from "this week." It was from a stump speech, months ago. And Biden, as it turns out, was ridiculing McCain:
Look. If you want to continue to challenge the Obama administration on the merits, in the matter of having recently used those words against McCain in the campaign, that's one thing. That challenge was thrown down, with gusto, over the weekend. But this is an example of willful journalistic fraud, plain and simple. What really surprises me is that we all lived through Hillary Clinton's Tuzla humiliation. We all saw how easy it was to find the video that proved she was not under sniper fire. We all just watched Jon Stewart paste Jim Cramer, with videos Cramer thought wouldn't ever come back to haunt him. We've seen how easy it is for people with a little bit of time and research skill to debunk misleading talking points, like the non-existent train between Disneyland and Las Vegas. Our own commenters are swift enough to point out the errors I make by accident!
It's very sad, and weird, because Fox News would have made their point just fine if they hadn't included the misleading part of this clip. All they've really done is demonstrate that they do not have enough faith in their own editorial premises to avoid bolstering them with falsehoods. But more to the point, whoever is responsible for putting this video together needs to accept a new prevailing reality, that stupid little lies like this will be debunked and exposed very quickly, so they may as well just cut out this nonsense entirely.
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Fox News Edits Clip To Suggest That Biden Recently Declared 'Fundamentals Of The Economy Are Strong' [ThinkProgress]
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