Fool Me Once

Most of the footage from Friday's Sarah Palin story--including a few seconds of teaser footage shown at the top of the broadcast--was from a July 7 interview that Andrea Mitchell conducted with Palin. All the shots of Palin on a boat or standing on shore in waders came from that interview. A clip of Palin from July 3 was labeled as such, but the producers made no attempt to label the July 7 footage as file footage. Why? This was not just an omission on the part of NBC. From the way the July 7 footage was integrated into the story, it's clear that the producers were attempting to fool the viewers into thinking that the footage was new. The Nightly News producers owe the viewers an apology for this intentional deception.