Katie Couric, who was accused of deceptively editing a gun documentary to make pro-Second Amendment individuals look bad, has a history of employing this tactic. According to the Washington Free Beacon’s Stephen Gutowski, the edits for the 2014 obesity film Fed Up were also misleading.
Gutowski explains how, despite promising an interview subject that he could stop and collect his thoughts, the journalist used the pauses to make Dr. David Allison look bad:
Dr. David Allison, an interview subject in the film and the director of the Nutrition Obesity Research Center, says he was a victim of shoddy journalism. “What she did to me is antithetical to not only just human decency and civility but it is antithetical to the spirit of science and democratic dialogue,” he told the Washington Free Beacon.
After a brief exchange in the film between Allison and Couric over whether or not sugary beverages contribute more to obesity than other foods, Couric asks Allison about the science behind his objections. Allison then begins to explain before stumbling and asking Couric if he could pause to “get his thoughts together.”
Allison said Couric had told him it would be all right to pause and gather his thoughts at any point during the interview if he felt he needed too.
“Ms. Couric had said to me at the beginning of our interview ‘You know, Dr. Allison, if at any point you need to go over an answer, you stumble on your words, just let me know, we’ll stop, and you can go back over it,'” he said.
Couric responds to Allison’s on camera request by saying “Okay,” but the film shows Dr. Allison sitting silently for another seven seconds before cutting to another interview.
In May, Gutowski revealed how Couric deceptively edited a gun documentary. The journalist has a long history of attacking Second Amendment rights. For more on that, see a report by the Media Research Center.
