How ridiculous has the media in the US gotten?
How about Peter Jennings not wanting to refer to the Osama message as disgusting?
Osama bin Laden’s videotaped message “fascinating” but not “disgusting.” ABC’s Peter Jennings on Friday night described bin Laden’s message as “quite fascinating and disgusting to read.” But a minute or so later on World News Tonight, the MRC’s Rich Noyes noticed, Jennings backtracked from one of his characterizations: “Probably not appropriate of me to characterize the tape as I did — calling it ‘disgusting.’”
Following a report from Brian Ross on what bin Laden spewed in his message played by al-Jazerra, Jennings alerted viewers: “The text of all this, by the way, you can find at ABCNews.com. Of course, it’s quite fascinating and disgusting to read.”
Jennings then played reaction soundbites from President Bush and Senator John Kerry before he was joined at the anchor desk by George Stephanopoulos. Jennings decided that it was inappropriate to have described the message as “disgusting,” but not to have called it “fascinating,” as he segued from the candidate clips to
Stephanopoulos: “So this is, of course, now a factor to some degree in the presidential election for the last few days. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos is with us. Probably not appropriate of me to characterize the tape as I did — calling it ‘disgusting.’ But how does a politician identify with the disgust of most, if not all Americans, and still either use this for his presidential campaign or see that it doesn’t hurt him?”Stephanopoulos advised that they must react “very carefully” in order “to look sober, to look tough and to look patriotic, not partisan.”
Poor Osama.
Our apologies.