The time disparity between President Obama and Governor Romney in the last debate has been widely discussed amongst honest media outlets. The president got about 10% more time to speak.
TheBlaze.com reported that President Obama received roughly 44:04 minutes compared to Romney's 40:50.
Today, top CNN executive Mark Whitaker issued an internal memo to all CNN employees defending Tuesday night's debate moderator Candy Crowley amid "conservative criticism.
"I've never seen anything like this," Glenn said this morning after seeing the memo. "This is incredible."
The memo makes the claim that President Obama got more speaking time because "he talks more slowly," asserting that they would be conducting a word could comparison between the two to see who actually spoke more.
"They're actually now, they're going to spend corporate dollars to justify internally the word count," Glenn joked.
Here's the full memo, via the Hollywood Reporter:
Let’s start with a big round of applause for Candy Crowley for a superb job under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. She and her team had to select and sequence questions in a matter of hours, and then she had to deal with the tricky format, the nervous questioners, the aggressive debaters, all while shutting out the pre-debate attempts to spin and intimidate her. She pulled it off masterfully.The reviews on Candy’s performance have been overwhelmingly positive but Romney supporters are going after her on two points, no doubt because their man did not have as good a night as he had in Denver. On the legitimacy of Candy fact-checking Romney on Obama’s Rose Garden statement, it should be stressed that she was just stating a point of fact: Obama did talk about an act (or acts) of terror, no matter what you think he meant by that at the time. On why Obama got more time to speak, it should be noted that Candy and her commission producers tried to keep it even but that Obama went on longer largely because he speaks more slowly. We’re going to do a word count to see whether, as in Denver, Romney actually got more words in even if he talked for a shorter period of time.
Glenn compared the excuse to shortening a football field because one person on the team has shorter legs than everyone else.
"Certainly they wouldn't say to an NFL team, "Well, they're calling their plays much slower. So we're just going to give them more plays so they can go beyond the end of the game." Because, you know, they're going almost to the end of the play clock," Stu said.
It's no mystery why the American people have given the mainstream media an 8% credibility rating. The debate is a timed event, it was a timed even in the last election and many before that — this is why candidates spend time and resources practicing.
If you're not a great student, you're probably going to spend more time studying before a test. If you're not a natural athlete, you're going to need to practice more. And, if you're trying to win re-election and you're not a fast speaker, you're going to need to work on speeding things up.
