Palin's interview was clearly doctored.

[beth_leonard]

Ok, so I admit it, I don't know what the Bush Doctrine is. And neither does Palin, according to a recent interview. I wanted to see it for myself, and was glad when one of my friends (sorry, I forget who) posted a link to that portion of the interview: http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/09/terrifying.html

She may not know what it is, but the interview was *clearly* doctored.


Look at second #1:40 in the video I linked to. Heck, here's the link directly so you can follow along at home:

Look at second #1:40 to 1:41 in the video. Pause it there.

Note the background, a brown piece of furniture over his left shoulder, a sliding glass window with green triangular drapes, a red plant, and no
center bar in the middle. (The furniture is the most obvious difference, aside from the fact that it looks like Palin's head is green-screened here.)

Now look at second #7 -- No brown wardrobe! A much more open room, no red plant, and square draperies.

I want everyone to see this, I'll just take screenshots for you:







I don't know what she said and when, but the interview was clearly doctored to change the question asked and her answer to make her look bad. The background in second #1:40 is the same as in #5 when he asks "Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?" but the background differences are more clear in second #1:40.

All of the questions are separate cuts from her answers, several have the interviewer's voice voiced-over a picture of her face (he could have been saying anything to her face)

Note second #47-58, when he says, "The Bush Doctrine as I understand it is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense." The interview is showing her face, and not his. It's a voice-over. He could have been saying anything to her face at that point.

At second #1:11, where the question is again a different set of cuts from the answer. The audio track doesn't feel smooth (second #1:18) and feels as if a question and answer were stitched together to make her sound like she's answering the question he just asked. Notice how she doesn't mention Pakistan and Afghanistan at all in her answer to his question, "Do we have the right to be making cross-border attacks from Pakistan to Afghanistan with or without the approval of the Pakistani government?"

There's the bit at second #1:40 where they clearly edited in (from an entirely different filming location) the first part of the new question.

And again at #2:07 where he presses her for a specific 'yes' or 'no' answer. That pressing question, they cut to her response of "we've got to have all options out there on the table" to make it sound as if she'd said "yes", but in reality she probably wasn't even in the same room with him when he asked that question to thin air.

So, in summary, the news lies. I don't know what she really said, but I'm reminded of a certain B5 episode.

Maybe the truth is that she doesn't know what the Bush Doctrine is, but
I'm not convinced that that interview proves it.

--Beth

Comments

[querldox.livejournal.com]

I've seen previous references that the interview was heavily edited.

Still, she actually came pretty close to the right answer to the Bush Doctrine question. Which would be "Which one?" as he's had a few and has mutated the precise definition on them to boot.

[donaithnen.livejournal.com]

That's weird, when i open your post up in a new page by looking at the comments i see the correct video, but in my friends list it shows up as a different video i was watching a day or two ago. Weird caching issues.

[dushai.livejournal.com]

I disagree with many of her beliefs; I have some sympathy for her, being suddenly thrust into the unreasonable scrutiny that we have turned our presidential elections into; I acknowledge that my sympathy for her in that regard is correlated with my implicit belief that her lack of large-scale political experience may indeed be an issue. Also, I'm generally socially liberal and fiscally conservative; since neither party has been demonstrating sound fiscal policies lately, that leaves me leaning Democratic by default. With those biases in mind...

The "Bush doctrine" question was ridiculous. There is no Bush Doctrine -- or, more accurately, there are several, none of which stuck well enough to be well-remembered by that name. While the A-plus answer would've been "Which Bush Doctrine? Preventive military action? Unlawful combatants? Democratizing the Middle East? With us or against us? Harboring terrorists is war? Unitary executive? If the President does it then it's not illegal?", I don't fault her for trying to stall for time against that question in her first interview. Heck, even Slate agrees, cutting Palin some slack even though Slate is generally acknowledged as firmly liberal.

I agree that there was clearly some editing. (I see it at 1:14; I don't see it at 1:41 vs. 0:07.) Whether it was done for time/conciseness or with the intent to distort and mislead, we can't know.

That said, my impression is that she's handled herself all right (considering her experience) so far, but she hasn't impressed me yet. Then again, Biden hasn't impressed me yet either.

(Obviously, this is all just my two cents. But it's a useful data point that at least one person with a liberal-ish bias thinks the Bush Doctrine question was wrong.)

[madmanatw.livejournal.com]

Do you mind if I link to this, or copy it to another forum if you'd prefer not to have strangers tromping around in your backyard?

[beth_leonard]

Please do. This type of editing is one of the things that upsets me about our current system -- even more than any given politician's politics.

--Beth

Not clearly doctored -- just different shot angles

[warlord-mit.livejournal.com]

Um, the video isn't clear at how deep the road is, but look at the angles. Between your screen shots it looks to ME like you're looking at different sections of the room.

My guess: the room has (at least) two of the same red lamps, one against the back wall (that you see in 0:07) and one against the side wall (that you see in 1:40). It's not the same lamp. It's not the same section of wall. It's not the same set of furniture.

If you consider the line connecting the two as 0 degrees, the shot from 0:07 is at approximately 80 degrees, whereas the shot from 1:40 is more like 20. If you also consider that the viewable area from the camera shot is probably around 50 degrees (+/- 25 degrees from the center of the shot) then from the 20-degree shot you see from -5 to 45, but the shot from 80 would get 55 to 105. I.e., the backgrounds would not overlap.

So I don't think you can say that this video was doctored just based on the angles of the shots, especially not from the two screen shots you've given.

Re: Not clearly doctored -- just different shot angles

[warlord-mit.livejournal.com]

Er, "room", not "road". Grr.

Re: Not clearly doctored -- just different shot angles

[beth_leonard]

Would you agree that every question and answer is a different take -- i.e. that they could have edited different questions into her answers?

--Beth

Re: Not clearly doctored -- just different shot angles

[warlord-mit.livejournal.com]

> Would you agree that every question and answer is a different take -- i.e. that they could have edited different questions into her answers?

I haven't watched the full video. However, based on other similar interviews I would say that no, each question and answer is not necessarily an individual take during the original filming; they usually have multiple cameras and splice them together.

However it certainly IS possible to splice a different question into the result. Whenever there's a cut there's really no way to know whether the before and after cut date a time differential; it's not like they have SMPTE time codes encoded into the video. Just look at how various comedy shows take existing interviews and plug in stupid questions to make a joke.

Re: Not clearly doctored -- just different shot angles

[beth_leonard]

PS. I know this is a common practice for the industry. When I was in college one of my professors was interviewed for a similar program. While the camera crew was still in his home, they received a call asking the interviewer to ask a different question of the guest appearing on TV that night. The crew filmed the interviewer asking a question at thin air in my professor's living room, and that night on TV my professor saw his living room while the interviewer asked a question that the other guest "answered" in a very incriminating way.

--Beth

[eilonwey.livejournal.com]

I'm curious --- have you heard the Palin camp accuse the news agency of doctoring the interview? Because she would obviously know of any discrepencies, having been there. Since her answer to that particular question didn't present her in a positive light, I would think her aids would speak up if there was a problem.

As far as discrepencies between questions and answers: I watched the interview, and in most cases she dodged the questions that were posed to her.

[madmanatw.livejournal.com]

This is something I was wondering, too. They have not been shy in the past of making such accusations.

Also, I do want to note one assumption in the original post: "to make her look bad." We don't know that for sure- in fact, I've seen people speculate about the doctoring of this interview and wondering if it was because she had to check her notes, ask her handlers for details, etc- though I would have thought she'd've managed a better response if that was the case. In any case, if it _was_ doctored (and the angle does, to me, look narrow enough that both shots could fit, but I can't tell for sure) we don't know why. If it was bad, I would expect the McCain/Palin camp to have raised a complaint.

After all, we do have confirmation that CBS doctored an interview with McCain... to make him look better. (They flew in an answer to one thing into another section because the answer he gave there had been nonsensical. The raw transcript was still available and so the network was caught and there was a whole bruhaha about them violating their ethics standards.) So given history I don't want to assume one way or the other about the intentions of this interview's doctoring.

Either way it goes, I don't want the media doctoring interviews and making candidates look good _or_ bad. I want the truth. Where's Spider Jerusalem when we need him?

[beth_leonard]

Either way it goes, I don't want the media doctoring interviews and making candidates look good _or_ bad. I want the truth.

Agreed.

--Beth

[(Anonymous)]

I can't find the link right now, but I did read a link (Fox News, I believe) that specified the Palin interview was edited and condensed to fit into the time slot given. They made specific point to the "Bush Doctrine" question and a couple of others that were edited so that Palin's responses didn't sound as coherent as they might have been otherwise.

I think this was just editing on ABC's part, I don't believe they were consciously trying to make Palin sound more or less competent on-the-air.

[feuervogel]

Fox News: Not the most reliable, unbiased source.

[si-anenome.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, like most people, she doesn't need editing to look like she's not qualified for the job.