White House Correspondent: State Department Censored My Questioning
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Reporter James Rosen accused the State Department of attempting to censor a question from the public record he asked during a press briefing about whether the Department lied regarding details of Iranian nuclear negotiations.
Rosen, the Chief White House Correspondent for Fox News told Rich Zeoli on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT that a back and forth he had with State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki about whether the public was misled has been deleted from their video archive.
"The entire eight minute exchange between her and me was excised from the archive of videos the State Department maintains on its own website of its briefings, replaced with a single white flash, after which one can see Ms. Psaki's head move abruptly from before the white flash. Just the entire exchange edited out. We contacted the State Department, we called it censorship. They noted that the transcript was in tact. They had not explanation, however, for this editing out of the one time where Jen Psaki appeared, in essence, to confirm that the State Department had lied to me."
He said that when confronted with the edit, the Department restored the original video, but only on their own website.
"They couldn't provide another instance where this white flash technique has been used to edit any other videos of the briefings on the web page of the State Department. They promised to restore the material quickly. They did. Except, they did not do so on the State Department's YouTube channel. So, all in all, it's a strange business and it comes amid this larger controversy over whether the Administration deceived the American public to sell the Iran deal."
When asked about this matter by another news agency, Rosen stated a Department spokesperson classified the edit as a glitch.
"Just the entire line of questioning erased with a white flash that, of course anyone who knows anything about video production, has to be inserted deliberately."