“This is the song that never ends, it goes on and on my friends,” or so the children’s song goes. And so the media’s chant against the Planned Parenthood videos continues.
On Thursday, CNN New Day co-anchor Alisyn Camerota spoke with candidate Carly Fiorina about her performance during Wednesday night’s Republican presidential primary debate. During the interview, Camerota found time not only to complain about the “edited” Planned Parenthood videos but also to attribute Fiorina’s “loss of momentum” to past comments about the videos.
Camerota began by disparaging Fiorina. “Do you feel that you did enough last night in the debate to regain your momentum?” she asked.
Camerota later clarified what she meant by “momentum”:
“When I say ‘some loss of momentum,’ I talk about what happened after the CNN debate. You had by most accounts a stellar performance. You shot up in the polls to double digits. You became second in the polling. You had 15%. And then, after that, there was a sense that you sort of disappeared. At least from the airwaves. It was hard to find you. And your poll numbers did drop.”
Citing the Washington Post, Camerota then interrogated Fiorina on the “obsolete” statistics she cited during last night’s debate concerning women’s unemployment.
Fiorina defended her numbers and slammed the liberal media in the process.
“The liberal media doesn’t like the data,” Fiorina pressed. “Perhaps the liberal media doesn’t like the facts. The facts are clear.”
Camerota took that as her cue to bring up the “edited” Planned Parenthood videos released by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP).
Of course, Camerota couldn’t make her own opinion too clear as a co-anchor, so instead she voiced what “people” thought (and by “people,” she didn’t mean pro-lifers).
“During the last debate, what people said was erroneous about what you said were about the Planned Parenthood sting videos,” Camerota charged. “And that what came out afterwards was that there had been portions that had been edited. Do you change your opinion about those now?”
Camerota should have begun with, “What the media said.”
The media bashed Fiorina after she challenged President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to “watch a fully-formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking…” during the Sept. 16 GOP primary debate. Camerota likely referred to how the footage of the “fetus on the table” in the seventh CMP video came from stock footage to illustrate a verbal description from a tissue technician (something only the media seem to be confused by, CMP Project Lead David Daleiden had stressed).
Speaking of editing, Camerota also didn’t mention the latest forensic analysis on the videos. Commissioned by Alliance Defending Freedom through Coalfire, a digital forensics firm with experience in civil and criminal investigations, the analysis found that footage missing consisted of commuting, camera adjustments, bathroom breaks, meals and waiting.
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But back to Fiorina. She called Camerota’s bluff:
“Wow, Alisyn, I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. Honestly. It’s clear now, it’s very clear that Planned Parenthood is harvesting body parts. So clear that they had to announce that they no longer take compensation for it. Honestly, this has been hashed and rehashed.”
It was her turn to ask Camerota a question: “Is there no other issue of economic import to the middle class in the United States of America that you’d like to talk about this morning?”
But Camerota wouldn’t let it go. Instead, she (ahem, “people”) suggested that Fiorina’s Planned Parenthood comments caused her “loss of momentum.”
“But that was the issue, that afterwards people went back at you about because they did feel as though those same videos had been edited. And some people, let me go on, even felt that is why your national poll numbers dipped. So I did want to get you on the record about that.”
“Oh, well, that’s quite a theory,” Fiorina responded. “Well, that’s quite a theory.”
CNN has been notorious in the past for trying to discredit the Planned Parenthood videos as “edited.” In a former statement to MRC Culture, Daleiden commented on the irony that “CNN, along with many in the media, used their news segment to criticize the video production at CMP when their own broadcast was filled with numerous cuts, edits, and voiceovers.”
“The fact is,” he continued, “CMP is exponentially more transparent than CNN or any mainstream network about our production decisions by posting both the summary videos of the conversations with top-level Planned Parenthood officials, and the full footage of those conversations.”
LifeNews Note: Katie Yoder writes for Newsbusters, where this originally appeared.
