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April 30, 2004

SCRIBBLE, SCRIBBLE

Is someone at CNN reading us (and taking notes)? You decide.

CNN flashed these words across the tube on Thursday morning: "not under oath," "no stenographer," "no transcript," "no recording."

Straight Up on Wednesday morning in < FONT color=#003399>LIP SERVICE: "Not under oath. Not in public. No recording. No transcript. Two note takers only."

Both of us were referring, of course, to the ventriloquist and his dummy's performance for the 9/11 commission.

Thanks to Alessandra Stanley, whose TV Watch reports we love, for pointing out CNN's bulletins. Her eye for detail and her salty comments are always rewarding.

Stanley's lede this morning:

If an important meeting takes place in the Oval Office and there are no television cameras to record it, did the meeting matter?

And her conclusion:

[T]he nonvisual event was so anathema to television that at one point, the CNN anchor Daryn Kagan said it seemed as if "the event took place in the 18th century."

By the way, it's now unclear how many note takers there actually were. Reports have varied. It turns out that all the commissioners were at least allowed to take notes. We don't know, however, what they may have scribbled down. "Their notebooks were taken from them before they left the session," The New York Times reports, "with the White House saying they would be returned after being reviewed for classified information."

A reminder from yesterday: If you want to see the dummy at his most inarticulate, just go to CNN.com and click the video link (on the right) next to the headline "Bush 9/11 session 'marvelous'." It's absolutely hilarious.

Posted by at April 30, 2004 09:34 AM

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