Romney tape ‘incomplete’

Cartoon: By Ramirez

The Romney 47% statement that seems to have caused outrage across America has come into the spotlight again. There is now evidence that the tape misses some of what was said between two segments, which makes it somewhat suspect, at least from the contextual viewpoint. There is no reason to suspect that his words were other than what is reported, but it is now clear that those were not the only words said.

 Breitbart reports: 

Mother Jones, the left-wing magazine that released a controversial video of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's remarks to a fundraiser in May, now admits that it has no full tape of what Romney said, and that its video is missing "one to two minutes" at the most important moment. 

The Legal Insurrection blog's William Jacobson and The Blaze both raised questions on Tuesday about whether Mother Jones had, as promised, revealed the full video, given an apparent jump cut in the critical section of Romney's remark.  

"Something is missing. Romney’s 47% answer was cut off before completed, and is not picked up on the Part 2 audio video," Jacobson noted. …  

 … There is no way to know, without the missing footage, exactly what Romney said. On Monday evening, Romney called for a complete video of his remarks to be released. That now turns out to be impossible, either because Romney's remarks were never recorded in full (as Mother Jones now claims), or because some of his remarks--perhaps mitigating some of the controversial effect of his statements--were selectively edited out of the tape by Mother Jones or its chain of sources (including former President Jimmy Carter's grandson). … 

 The 47% figure mentioned is no surprise; it’s been around for some time and widely reported except in the liberal media. What is disappointing though is Romney’s assumption that none of that 47% want to rise into an income bracket that will allow them to advance, and would rather remain on welfare and vote for Obama. Given the President’s class warfare agenda and scare campaign though, he is determined to ensure that this group remain as his major constituency.

 Owing to the unknown time that is ‘missing’ or edited out, it is not known whether it contained something to mitigate this perception. Journalism relies on integrity, or at least a perception of it in order to maintain an aura of credibility, something that has been missing for a long time.

 This especially seems to be the case with political reporting, where ‘credibility’ seems to rely on telling the chosen audience something it wants to believe.