When the Outfoxed gals, NBC, and Media Matters all gang up on Brit Hume, you know he must be doing something right. With J$P Video!

It was just as Mort Kondracke predicted. Almost as soon as Vice-President Cheney finished taping his exclusive interview with Brit Hume, the catcalls began. He went on the evil Fox News Channel. Why doesn't he hold a press conference? It's not enough. And attacks from the Fox haters came streaming in even before Special Report aired. Over at the newshounds (another fine product of the Outfoxed mob), the dogs were snarling:

All in all a very softball interview done by a very partisan reporter.

That analysis is a pretty neat trick, considering it was posted at 3:59 pm. The interview hadn't even aired yet, only a few snippets that amounted to maybe 10% of the entire content. We understand the newspoodles will have a post later today critiquing the closing ceremonies at Torino.

Then there are the competitors, who are always ready to take a cheap shot. Keith Olbermann headlined his "news" hour with the question:

Was the interview a bucketful of softballs? And the cliches about the Vice-President facing only friendly questioning? Surprising statistics that may say otherwise.

Mr Olbermann went on to say that Cheney appeared:

Not in a news conference, nor in a written statement, nor to a panel of interviewers from a variety of news organizations, but rather before the more malleable cameras of Fox News.

Now we have two implications from Olbermann that Brit Hume's interview was a puff piece. (As for those "surprising statistics", they had nothing to do with softball questions at all.) Mr Olbermann spent over half his show on the news this interview made and the "discrepancies" it exposed, while repeatedly sending viewers his message that Brit Hume didn't do his job. Alert viewers might have wondered just what Olbermann was talking about--particularly when even guest John Dean said that Hume "pressed [Cheney]" and credited "the sequence of the questioning". Quite a "softball interview".

Over at newsbusters, they caught some jealousy from 30 Rock, courtesy of Kelly O'Donnell:

The official White House transcript of the interview shows Cheney said 'I had a beer at lunch.' Fox News did not show that particular clip during Brit Hume's program.

The same song, with a few elaborations, is being sung by David Brock's gang:

In airing Brit Hume's interview with Vice President Dick Cheney, Fox News omitted Cheney's comments about drinking a beer the day he shot his hunting companion. Fox News even excluded the comments from what it said was the "full interview" posted on its website.

Kelly O'Donnell is suggesting Fox did not report this aspect, but what is she not telling us? Her careful wording clearly leaves open several possibilities: like the clip was shown during other programs (Ding!), or that it was reported on Brit Hume's program but not illustrated with a clip (Ding!). The following appeared on Special Report in the lead story, at the very top of the hour [QuickTime video clip]:



The Media Matters salvo proves to be devious. Note that their summary quoted above claims the comments were not included on the Fox News website. (They later admit they were talking about the video clips from Special Report.) To make their point, they add:

Omitted from the "full interview" was the following exchange, taken from the transcript of the interview released by the White House

That's the same thing O'Donnell did: cite the White House transcript. But it's trickery. By citing the White House transcript, they are implying that the information was scrubbed from the Fox News website. But the full transcript certainly is available on foxnews.com, where it has been sitting since yesterday. Why do both O'Donnell and Brock try to leave the impression that it isn't?

Brock's Brigade admits that the beer angle was mentioned, but tries to minimize Fox's coverage:

Fox News chose not to broadcast Cheney's acknowledgment; instead, Hume paraphrased it in setting up the interview

As the clip above shows, that is untruthful. It was Carl Cameron who reported the beer statement in the lead story at the top of the hour. What else is Media Matters not telling us? How about the fact that this news was repeated during the hour and reported a second time! Brit Hume did so, not in setting up the interview but as part of the airing of the segments [QuickTime video clip]:



The real question appears to be how many beers the crowd at Media Matters had before they thought they could get away with such a sloppy, misleading, and deceptive report.