Diane Sawyer has an article, The “Dean Scream” — The Version of Reality You Didn’t See.. or Hear on TV

I have copied the article to the “Read More” section below. It is absolutely chilling how much damage the networks can do. I especially like the one CNN exec who said ” “We’ve all been wrestling with this. If we had it to do over again, we’d probably pull ourselves back.”
— Princell Hair, General Manager – CNN

Nice that you “wrestle with it”, and then continue to pull shit like this. It’s disgraceful that Dean’s chances will probably be destroyed by this.

I was not “bothered”by it BEFORE I knew about the crowd-noise-filtering micrphone. To me, it is something we see every day, and to lay this on Dean is absolutely disgraceful. Good job, media people. I’d like to see you people have to face some of your own medicine, scrutiny, and judgment. I remember a Twiglight Zone Movie segment where a bigot got placed into several historical contexts where HE was the oppressed (ie. a Jew in Nazi Germany, etc.). Maybe media people should have to live a while i nthe scrutiny of their own “slants” and “reporting”, and see how they fare.

After my interview with Dean and his wife in which I played the tape again — in fact played it to them — I noticed that on that tape he’s holding a hand-held microphone. One designed to filter out the background noise. It isolates your voice, just like it does to Charlie Gibson and me when we have big crowds in the morning. The crowds are deafening to us standing there
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Video: Watch the Story
Images From the Story
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But the viewer at home hears only our voice.

So, we collected some other tapes from Dean’s speech including one from a documentary filmmaker, tapes that do carry the sound of the crowd, not just the microphone he held on stage. We also asked the reporters who were there to help us replicate what they experienced in the room.

Reena Singh, ABC News Dean campaign reporter: “What the cameras didn’t capture was the crowd.”

Garance Franke-Ruta, Senior Editor, American Prospect: “As he spoke, the audience got louder and louder and I found it somewhat difficult to hear him.”

Dean’s boisterous countdown of the upcoming primaries as we all heard it on TV was isolated, when in fact he was shouting over the roaring crowd.

And what about the scream as we all heard it? In the room, the so-called scream couldn’t really be heard at all. Again, he was yelling along with the crowd.

Neal Gabler, Senior Fellow, Lear Center USA: “When you’re talking about visuals, context is everything. So, you’ve got a situation in which you have what I’d call the televised version of reality, which is not the same as the actual reality in room. You know in a situation like this, no one takes responsibility.”

Comments from network executives:

CBS News: “Individually we may feel okay about our network, but the cumulative effect for viewers with 24-hour cable coverage is — it may have been overplayed and, in fact, a disservice to Dean and the viewers.”
— Andrew Heyward, President – CBS News
ABC News: “It’s always a danger that we’ll use good video too much.”
— David Westin, President – ABC News

CNN: “We’ve all been wrestling with this. If we had it to do over again, we’d probably pull ourselves back.”
— Princell Hair, General Manager – CNN

Fox News: “It got overplayed a bit, and the public clearly thought that, too, and kept him alive for another round.”
— Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO – Fox News