CBS’s Propaganda Ambush in Tehran - the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Interview
CBS’s 60 Minutes aired an interview on Sunday evening with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I was stunned by what I witnessed. Was the reporter conducting the interview co-opted by the Bush administration to deliver a) propoganda to the American public, and b) a message to Ahmadinejad?
Commentary By: Richard Blair
This past Sunday evening, I watched the CBS’s 60 Minutes interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and was stunned by what I witnessed. In fact, I was so stunned, I went into the “live blogging” mode at Daily Kos for nearly four hours, just to calibrate my own reaction, and see if I was being overly sensitive. Thankfully, it appears that I wasn’t losing my political bearings, as my opinion was mirrored by many others who watched the show.
The reporter who conducted the interview, Scott Pelley, sat down with Ahmadinejad in Tehran before the Iranian president left for his controversial trip to New York. Now, let’s be clear - I’m not a fan of Ahmadinejad - quite to the contrary. I think the guy is a dangerous fruitcake. The fact that he’s a holocaust denier (and sponsored a conference of like-thinking anti-Israel opinion leaders from around the world, including David Duke) tells you everything you need to know. Plus, I think he’s got a bit of Saddam in him. By that, I mean that he’s going to show a brave and bellicose face to the world, and not blink at George Bush’s empty threats. In fact, if George Bush was making anything more than empty threats, Ahmadinejad would probably be more conciliatory.
Anyway, it wasn’t Mahmoud Ahmadinejad answers to Pelley’s line of questioning that got me going. It was Scott Pelley himself. From the very outset, Pelley was posing confrontational statements (not questions) as “fact”, and was flat out insulting to the head of state of a foreign nation. We’re not talking about hard questions here, but his body language, his tone and his presentation. We’re talking about Pelley catapulting Bush regime talking points as “fact” - unsupported statements rather than questions - when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
snip//
It was scary. I have never witnessed the U.S. media being so totally co-opted by the Bush regime.
We entered a new phase in the saber rattling on Sunday evening.
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http://allspinzone.com/wp/2007/09/24/cbss-propaganda-ambush-in-tehran-the-mahmoud-ahmadinejad-interview/