Fareed Zakaria Defends Romney From Media Taking 'Very Poor' Remark 'Entirely Out of Context'

A rather extraordinary thing happened on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS Sunday.

The host actually defended Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney from the media's proclivity to take his statements "entirely out of context" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

FAREED ZAKARIA: What I noticed though, we talk about the gaffes in the debates and the campaign. The one gaffe, Romney has this new gaffe of, you know, the comment about the poor. I feel as though in some ways the guy can’t get a break because if you look at the previous gaffe where he talked about “I like to fire people,” he wasn’t talking about firing people. He was talking about firing insurance companies, and that’s absolutely clear.

And here he says, “I’m not so concerned about the poor, they have a safety net, if it has holes I’ll repair it.” I feel as though the media here have sort of said, “Yes, yes, but if we take this entirely out of context, it really sounds like he’s being very mean to the poor.” It just feels like, “Yeah, but you just took it entirely out of context.”

Interesting observation considering the anchor in the middle of this firestorm, CNN's Soledad O'Brien, received congratulations for her interview from two different CNN contributors on the air with one actually giving her a high five.

While Zakaria was pointing out the hypocrisy here, he might have scolded folks on his own network for their part in not only taking Romney "entirely out of context," but also spreading the misinformation as far as they possibly could.

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