White House to NBC: Air Full Bush Interview

In a strongly-worded e-mail to NBC News president Steve Capus Monday, White House counselor Ed Gillespie said NBC edited an interview with President George Bush to make it look as though the president was agreeing with interviewer Richard Engel when he was not. "This deceitful editing to further a media-manufactured story line is utterly misleading and irresponsible," Gillespie wrote, "and I hereby request in the interest of fairness and accuracy that the network air the president's responses to both initial questions in full on the two programs that used the excerpts." Gillespie also took the opportunity to criticize NBC for once describing the Iraq war as a "civil war" and for reporting that government figures came just short of an official declaration of recession, then threw in a shot at MSNBC: "Mr. Capus, I'm sure you don't want people to conclude that there is really no distinction between the 'news' as reported on NBC and the 'opinion' as reported on MSNBC, despite the increasing blurring of those lines," he said. "I welcome your response to this letter and hope it is one that reassures your broadcast network's viewers that blatantly partisan talk show hosts like Christopher Matthews and Keith Olbermann at MSNBC don't hold editorial sway over the NBC network-news division. NBC defended the interview in a statement Monday.
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