The White House is blasting NBC News for what it contends is “deceitful editing” of correspondent Richard Engel’s interview of President Bush that aired last night on “NBC Nightly News” and this morning on “Today.” It also is questioning the network’s objectivity on other news stories.

In an e-mail today to NBC News President Steve Capus, Counselor to the President Ed Gillespie asserted that the edited interview misrepresented President Bush’s response to Mr. Engel’s questions about whether the president’s use of the term “appeasement” in remarks to Israel's Knesset was targeted at Sen. Barack Obama.

“This deceitful editing to further a media-manufactured storyline is utterly misleading and irresponsible, and I hereby request in the interest of fairness and accuracy that the network air the president’s responses … in full on the two programs that used the excerpts,” the letter said.
“Mr. Capus, I’m sure you don’t want people to conclude that there is really no distinction between the ‘news’ as reported on NBC and the ‘opinion’ as reported on MSNBC, despite the increasing blurring of those lines. I welcome your response to this letter, and hope it is one that reassures your broadcast network’s viewers that blatantly partisan talk show hosts like Christopher Matthews and Keith Olbermann at MSNBC don’t hold editorial sway over the NBC network news division.”

Democrats have been quick to criticize the president’s Knesset speech, suggesting President Bush used “appeasement” to take an unfair political swipe at Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Obama on foreign soil. The White House says the president did nothing of the sort.

The letter suggests that, as edited, the interview fed into the Democratic storyline, when in fact the full questions and answers disputed that storyline.

The letter quoted Mr. Engel’s question as being, “You said that negotiating with Iran is pointless, and then you went further. You said that it was appeasement. Were you referring to Sen. Barack Obama?”

The president, the letter said, responded: “You know, my policies haven’t changed, but evidently the political calendar has. People need to read the speech. You didn’t get it exactly right, either.

“What I said is that we need to take the words of people seriously. And when, you know, a leader of Iran says that they want to destroy Israel, you’ve got to take those words seriously. And if you don’t take them seriously, then it harkens back to a day when we didn’t take other words seriously. It was fitting that I talked about not taking the words of Adolf Hitler seriously on the floor of the Knesset. But I also talked about the need to defend Israel, the need to not negotiate with the likes of Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas. And the need to make sure Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon.”

In a statement, NBC said: "Richard Engel's interview with President Bush has been available, unedited, in its entirety, for the past day, on our Web site. Our reporting accurately reflects the interview. Just as the White House does not participate in the editorial process at the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal or USA Today, NBC News, as part of a free press in a free society, makes its own editorial decisions."

Mr. Gillespie accused NBC of “selective editing.”

“NBC’s selective editing of the president’s response is clearly intended to give viewers the impression that he agreed with Engel’s characterization of his remarks when he explicitly challenged it. Furthermore, [it] omitted the references to Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas and ignored the clarifying point in the president’s follow-up response that U.S. policy is to require Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment program before coming to the table, not that 'negotiating with Iran is pointless' and amounts to 'appeasement.'”

Mr. Gillespie contended the full answers make clear that the president’s remarks echoed past policy statements that are now being looked at through a political prism; corrects the inaccurate premise of the question asked by putting “appeasement” in the proper context of taking the words of leaders seriously, not “negotiating with Iran”; and re-states longstanding U.S. policy positions against negotiating with Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas and allowing Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.

Mr. Gillespie’s letter also takes NBC to task on two other issues. It questions whether NBC has formally abandoned its November 2006 decision to describe the Iraq war as a “civil war” without announcing the change.

“I noticed that around September of 2007, your network quietly stopped referring to conditions in Iraq as a ‘civil war.’ Is it still NBC News’ carefully deliberated opinion that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war? If not, will the network publicly declare that the civil war has ended, or that it was wrong to declare it in the first place?”

The letter also questioned NBC anchor Brian Williams’ April 30 report that the government economic numbers coming out suggested the country was “just short of the official declaration of a recession.”

“The GDP estimate was a positive 0.6% for the first quarter. Slow growth, but growth nonetheless. This followed a slow but growing fourth quarter in 2007. Consequently, even if the first-quarter GDP estimate had been negative, it still would not have signaled a recession—neither by the unofficial rule of thumb of two consecutive quarters of negative growth, nor the more robust definition by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Furthermore, never in our nation’s history have we characterized economic conditions as a ‘recession’ with unemployment so low….

“Are there numbers besides the ‘government number’ to go by? Is there reason to believe 'the government number' is suspect? How does the release of positive economic growth for two consecutive quarters, albeit limited, stop ‘just short of the official declaration of a recession’?”

(Editor: Gilbert)

7:12 p.m.: Updated with statement from NBC