Understanding the Standards

Continuing the fallout from the Katie Couric CBS Evening News interview with Sen. John McCain last night, The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz has more on the answer in question.

CBS News SVP Paul Friedman said in a statement: “The report was edited under extreme time constraints and one piece of tape was put in the wrong order. Fortunately, this did not in any way distort what Senator McCain was saying.”

But did the “wrong order” mean a violation of their Standards? Crooks and Liars reports the CBS News Standards (sec. 111-5 Editing, to be exact) says, “If a question to an interview subject is used, the answer must be to that specific question.”

As has been made clear over the last 24 hours, that did not happen.

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