Watched Lehrer's News Hour for a while tonight (must switch over to Seinfeld at 7:30, which is good because I have had enough by then) and caught the Iraq analysis with Albright and Kissinger.

They prefaced their report with video clips of Bush and Kerry speeches about Iraq. There were 4 clips two of Bush and 2 of Kerry. I didn't catch from the narration the where's of each video clip but the the first two were at the VFW Convention per the piece of Banner behind Kerry and then the similar colored banner behind Bush (I spotted a couple of caps as well.) There was a stark difference in presentation even though their was no voice over. The difference?

Clip of Kerry's speech: Generous applause after each remark and with editing it seemed continuous. I did catch watch sounded like one heckler for a second (must have been an oversight.

Clip of Bush's speech: NO APPLAUSE. True!!! It was all cut out. I could see in some snippets people starting to stand or returning to their seats but the lack of appluase was deafening. Unbelieveable.

The second clips were not as butchered to make Kerry look good.

Albright stopped by at Kerry HQ to pick up current talking points. Kissinger was not impressive. It coud have been an off day for him, but I think it might be age slowing and disorganizing his thoughts. He has always needed time to express himself but tonight he had trouble knitting his points together. He was still better than Albright but in his prime, he would have mopped the floor with her. Kissinger had one subtle jab after Albright spewed a string of talking points, and Lehrer turned and asked for his thoughts and he started with like "I'm not here to campaign for one side or the other ..." (I'll update when/if the transcript is dumped online.)

Anyway, add LNH to the list of news organizations manipulating listener response to speeches in their news coverage.