CBS edit totally changes what Bill Clinton told Charlie Rose on Big Question of the Day -- HRC health
09/14/2016
If you saw the headline you may have thought, as I did, that it was a vague hook about something that probably amounted to nothing ("CBS News Edits Out Embarrassing Verbal Slip"). Well, it's not nothing, it's big. CBS, in its broadcast, removed Bill's first and most revealing answer and retraction, changing “frequently—well not frequently, rarely” to simply "rarely". The full sentence and other context are in CBS's article about the interview:
“Well if it is, it’s a mystery to me and all of her doctors,” he said, “because frequently—well not frequently, rarely—but on more than one occasion, over the last many, many years, the same sort of thing happened to her when she got severely dehydrated.”
Sorry, if anyone, but ESPECIALLY Bill Clinton, says something like, "frequently, I mean rarely, multiple occasions, but I mean over many many years", the public deserves to hear all of that and decide for themselves which parts to believe, which part of his teeming brain to listen to as its more and less honest and dishonest hatchlings jostle and trample each other in the rush for his mouth. The guy is a master: he really doesn't hardly ever lie, he talks in a way that makes you want to believe he's totally on your side, and to stop listening before he gets through all of the qualifiers and reversals at the end of the sentence, but you have to doggedly listen to all that while reserving all judgment on what impression to form, or you'll misunderstand him every time. So if you ever take a jot or a tittle out of one of his sentences, you'll change the meaning a hundredfold.
Depressing that this was with Charlie Rose. Rose gives every impression of setting the gold standard for thoughtful, nuanced discourse and intellectual honesty that brings everyone together around his table. "Talking with Charlie Rose" is almost a sacred rite, even more so than testifying to a court under oath on penalty of perjury.
I may have only clicked on the story because the part of the article that showed up in Facebook's link had a word missing, and I have a pet peeve about people who leave mistakes uncorrected when they are criticizing someone else's minor wording mistake or writing about how important good grammar is. But that typo had been fixed in the article although it remains in Facebook's display, and it wasn't in an article about a trivial mistake, as it turns out.
CBS News Edits Out Embarrassing Verbal Slip in Bill Clinton Interview
By Alex Griswold on mediaite.com
Bill Clinton Says Hillary Has Had Fainting Spells ‘On More Than One Occasion’
CBS article that contained the full sentence as of this writing, 4:00 p.m. 9/13/16:
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