After State Dept. Confession, Will WH Finally Admit It Edited Pres. Hollande's Comment?

Craig Bannister | June 2, 2016
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Is the Obama Administration now ready to admit that someone requested the editing of French President Francois Hollande’s “Islamist terrorism” comment - now that the State Dept. has confessed it did the same thing to Fox News reporter James Rosen’s question about Iran?

Yesterday, a State Dept. spokesman admitted that the deletion of the Rosen video segment was not a “glitch” (as it had previously claimed) – but, an intentional censorship:

The State Department admitted Wednesday that a 2013 press briefing video was purposefully altered to remove a portion of a discussion about the Iran nuclear talks, after an unknown State Department official asked that it be edited out.

Spokesman John Kirby's announcement contradicted the position held by the department for the last three weeks, during which officials said the video was missing because of a "glitch."

Likewise, when MRCTV reported on April 1 that the White House posted video muting out audio of French Pres. Francoise Hollande and his translator saying the words, “Islamist terrorism,” the White House posted an explanation claiming “a technical issue with the audio during the recording” caused the lost audio – but, then, somehow, posted a link a version of the video without the recording “technical error.”

But, this “technical error” excuse is just as implausible as the Rosen “glitch” alibi:

  1. Shortly after the event on Thursday, the White House posted video and an accurate transcript of Hollande’s comment, so they must’ve used a full-audio version of the video. Friday morning, the original video was pulled and replaced with the message that “This video has been removed by the user.”
  2. The video was then re-posted, with the audio of Hollande’s “Islamist terrorism” comment missing.
  3. After MRCTV exposed the missing audio, the White House posted its explanation – but, left the missing-audio video posted, telling readers they could click on a link to a sub-page where the “complete audio” version was buried.
  4. By Saturday, the tainted video was finally replaced on the White House Video Gallery page.

Thus, the White House had the “complete audio” video all along, because it used it to create the official White House transcript, so it appears there wasn’t the alleged “drop in audio” during recording.

So, is the Rosen Recant simply the first domino to fall as more and more censored videos are uncovered and the Obama Administration takes responsibility for them?

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