Sunday, July 15, 2007

CNN's Counterpoint to Moore's Counterpoint

Michael Moore's opening salvo to Wolf Blitzer during CNN's "The Situation Room" this week made quite a bit of news.

After the program aired, Moore followed up with a list of counterpoints to each of CNN's "glaring mistakes."

However CNN today published a point by point rebuttal to each of Moore's counterpoints, save one. CNN admits to only one factual mistake in their report, which they claim was a result of transcription error.

Generally, CNN's main point is Moore's selective use of:

A) Data from outdated reports, and

B) Data from multiple sources, which Moore cherry-picks and collates to present his own distorted view as objective truth.

Ultimately, the entire episode highlights two things:

Firstly, Michael Moore is an arrogant, bullying blowhard, who can dish out mendacious, vitriolic bile by the handful, but cannot swallow the same criticism no matter how mild.

Secondly, Wolf Blitzer remains a crash test dummy for any guest to have their way with.

Update: Hot Air posts a recut of the Michael Moore/Wolf Blitzer interview. Cheeky.

Update: Instapundit links to Riehl World View, which links back here.

Update: Ed Driscoll considers Michael Moore's Surprisingly Rapid Post-9/11 Superstardom.

Update: Pajamas Media links to other related comments on Michael Moore's tantrum.

Update: O'Reilly has more video and comments on Moore's exchange with Wolf Blitzer.

Update: Flashback January 2007 - Vice President Dick Cheney takes Blitzer down a notch for taking it personal.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whoa.

A CNN document it's hard to quibble with.

Purple Avenger said...

When CNN goes after a lefty you know there's gotta be something seriously wrong.

Anonymous said...

I read the article, and to put it bluntly, it seems that Moore "Owned" CNN on his points and counterpoints. Funny...

Anonymous said...

the Blind leading the blind....

Anonymous said...

It was a lazy story...cnn went out to prove moore's numbers wrong. They knew the source of his numbers but reported these like he made them up.

Not as if he taken them from different sources.

Anonymous said...

CNN's final counterpunch is more like a limp noodle. It basically amounts to (1) CNN saying "he's stirring the pot -- but that's suppose to be our job -- so we don't like it, and (2) cherry picking means using multiple sources for your data. Sorry, cherry picking is when you take misleading data from different sources. The data was hardly misleading.

Paul Allen said...

CNN certainly doesn't have the high ground in this debate, as most of you have commented.

Their 'counterpunch' to Moore seemed to pull punches, and its PC preamble about how they respect Moore and his work, etc., was just unnecessary.

This is one more incident for the history books, one in a long line of comedic exchanges among lefty media personalities.

Remember Jon Stewart's skewering of CNN's Crossfire a few years ago? That essentially led to Crossfire's cancellation and Tucker Carlson's firing.

However, although Stewart's outburst was emotional, he's much less detestable than Moore, and it's hard to argue with the points he made.

If Wolf Blitzer the Crash Test Dummy had been on Crossfire that day, that would have just been icing on the cake.