Last Friday, the Obama campaign released a Mitt Romney attack ad that deceptively edited a September 23 broadcast of CBS's 60 Minutes.
Take a look at the ad side by side with what Romney actually told Scott Pelley (video follows with transcript and commentary):
SCOTT PELLEY: You made on your investments personally about $20 million last year and you paid 14 percent in federal taxes. That’s the capital gains rate. Is that fair to the guy who makes $50,000 and paid a higher rate than you did?
PELLEY: So you think it is fair?
MITT ROMNEY: Yeah, I think it’s the right way to encourage economic growth.
VOICEOVER: Lower tax rates for him … than us. Is that the way to grow America?
Here's the full transcript of that exchange with the edited out words in bold:
ROMNEY: It is a low rate. And one of the reasons why the capital gains tax rate is lower is because capital has already been taxed once at the corporate level, as high as thirty-five percent.
PELLEY: So you think it is fair?
ROMNEY: Yeah, I -- I think it's -- it's the right way to encourage economic growth, to get people to invest, to start businesses, to put people to work.
Quite a difference with Romney's full answer in there, isn't it?
Now, it's certainly not surprising that the Obama campaign would do this as honesty and integrity aren't a hallmark of this White House.
Yet I can't identify any complaint coming from Pelley or CBS News for the use of their programming and/or its deceptive editing.
This is in stark contrast to other news outlets that have spoken up this year when campaigns used their material.
In July, CNBC's John Harwood rebuked Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS for using a snippet of his comments in one of its ads.
Earlier this month, NBC's Andrea Mitchell complained about being used in an Obama ad.
Even the incredibly liberal PBS recently squawked when Big Bird appeared in an Obama ad.
Yet I can find no such pushback from CBS News or Pelley when their material was used and deceptively edited to attack Romney.
Of course, this is hardly surprising as Pelley's entire premise was flawed in the first place.
He said, "Is that fair to the guy who makes fifty thousand dollars and paid a higher rate than you did?"
According to the Internal Revenue Service, a person with an adjusted gross income of $50,000 paid a tax rate of 7.7 percent in 2009.
For CBS News, journalism seems to mean never letting facts get in the way of your agenda.
As such, why should they care if their false report is deceptively edited by the Obama campaign given honesty and integrity not being one of their hallmarks either?
(HT Bob Parks)
