Posted on 11/23/2005 1:56:25 AM PST by RWR8189
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - CNN apologized on Tuesday and offered a rare explanation from its control booth for a technical glitch many viewers failed to notice -- a large "X" the network flashed over Vice President Dick Cheney's face.
The wayward graphic, which CNN said lasted for about one-seventh of a second, appeared during the network's live coverage of Cheney's speech on Monday addressing critics of the Bush administration's conduct of the war in Iraq.
Word of the snafu quickly surfaced on the Internet, including still photos of the image posted by online columnist Matt Drudge, along with a story suggesting that some who saw the momentary "X" thought it might have been deliberate.
CNN, a unit of Time Warner Inc., later issued a mea culpa saying an investigation by senior management concluded "this was a technical malfunction, not an issue of operator error" and expressing regret for the incident.
The network followed up with a special on-air segment during its "CNN Live Today" broadcast, in which anchor Daryn Kagan joined the network's technical manager, Steve Alperin, in the control room to offer a fuller explanation.
The "X" image, a place-holding marker used by technicians to cue up graphics, is not supposed to be visible to viewers but was inadvertently projected onto the screen by a malfunction in a "switcher" device, they explained.
"So, for all the conspiracy theories out there," Kagan said, " ... that's not what this is about. It's a computer bug that people deal with everyday. It's just that ours was in front of millions of people."
A spokesman for the vice president said Cheney had no comment on the incident.
My daughter reminded me today that she saw the same kind of "X" across candidate Bush's face during a 2004 election newscast. Anyone else see it?
The Team Hollywood article reads like a hoax. The recording does not seem genuine either. I'm not falling for it and I suggest no one else fall for it either. In the article it says that Team Hollywood had a field a large volume of phone calls because of the X thing. Who has ever heard of Team Hollywood and why would anyone call them because of the X? The tape seems to be scripted, the pauses, line deliver, and the few times they interrupt each other do not seem to be natural. Yes, they're ad-libbing to some extent. It would be easy to mix such an audio and edit in the CNN phone hold recording.
One-seventh of a second? Is this true? If it is we are wasting our time and Drudge was just desperate for a story. Move along ...
I agree. FOX did a demo of this on Fox and Friends this a.m. It can be deliberately generated with the simple press of a button on a switching panel. Seems it's less likely, but possible that the image could be fed from another source.
If that's the explanation CNN wants to live with, they should demo it and explain where it came from.
" . . . , it was no equipment malfunction."
Please, please put your response on CNN's contact form and
send it as well as to Drudge. Thank you for your explanation.
OMG! Has that tape been authenticated?
Sean Hannity...is he still on radio? I've sometimes heard the beginnings of his show but have never heard the end of it.
Why...because this "wannabe" - almost ALWAYS - has a need to feed his conservative audience with a dose from one of his butthole liberal friends on the show.
HELL, if I wanted to listen to 'liberal-speak' - I would just dial-in to AirFARSE America.
So, I turn him off and don't come back - even after the liberal hack has moved on.
they lie about all the other news, so why would they tell the truth about a glitch?
You are so correct ... I too am a former newscast director and this was no "computer glitch". It was caused by a human, not a computer. Deliberate or not, someone in the control room did this by screwing around!
These guys were local broadcast.
Dittos from a former Air Force Armed Forces Radio & Televison broadcaster. Iv'e directed and T.D.'d many live newscasts and other productions and fully concur that this was the control room guys screwing around, putting the "X" over Cheney's face in preview bank and it got on the air by mistake. The "X" had to have been created on purpose and available as a video source on the switcher.
CNN is not a broadcast station, so it does not have a broadcast license.
Is this the one that has nasty rumors about having Rush's interest?
Funny how their "errors" always target key people at key moments of the right. It's like when WalMart talks about errors of deliverers, as they always seem to be in the favor of the delivery man....
Losers.
This kind of disrespectful crap is what I'm really getting tired of. The constant attacks from many different fronts..the lies, the omission of information in news stories (so your side doesn't look bad), just the low down sleazyness of the radical leftist democrats toward the leaders of the republican party is reaching a breaking point. People need to be prosecuted and put in jail for thier dishonesty and the attempted distruction of good and honest people.
Isn't that convient?. (Lily Tomlin as Ernestine doing the Church Lady).
Amazing that so many folks saw it in just one-seventh of a second.
Didn't Congress pass a law years ago against so-called 'subliminal advertising' that was supposed to flash an image on the screen quicker than the eye could see but would register on the brain?
Someone should look up that law and refer CNN to the Department of Justice.
ROFL@!
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