Communist News Network At It Again

More evidence of the bias in the MSM, specifically the Communist News Network:

CNN MARKS CHENEY: NETWORK FLASHES ‘X’ OVER VP’S FACE DURING LIVE SPEECH

**Exclusive**

At 11:04:45 AM ET Monday CNN was airing Vice President Dick Cheney’s speech live from the American Enterprise Institute in Washington — when a large black ‘X’ repeatedly flashed over the vice president’s face!

The ‘X’ over Cheney’s face appeared each time less than a second, creating an odd subliminal effect.

As this DRUDGE REPORT screen capture reveals, while one ‘X’ flashed over Cheney’s face CNN ran a headline at the bottom of its screen: “CHENEY: I DO NOT BELIEVE IT IS WRONG TO CRITICIZE.”

One top White House source expressed concern about what was aired over CNN.

“Is someone in Atlanta trying to tell us something?”

A CNN spokesman did not return repeated calls late Monday night.

No excuses this time. A glitch, give me a freaking break. Has anyone EVER seen this during any live event.

UPDATE 1953 hrs pst

The Political Teen has the video slowed down here.

UPDATE 2003hrs pst

Here is a blown up picture of the text below the X. You can definately see something written: (click on the picture to see full size)

Could the text be an attempt to black out the lower portion of the text so the only thing visible would be “CHENEY:I DO NOT BELIEVE”?

UPDATE 2011hrs pst

Here is the video in real time. The X starts at the 1:25 mark.

UPDATE 2024hrs pst

Here is another shot of the X after someone from Free Republic worked on it to get the text out:

Here is some more of the comments on Free Republic from people who appear to know what they are talking about:

Switcher glitches are, by defintion, a loss of data or a loss of synch resulting in random crap. What you see here is a graphics generator adding graphics to a video signal. Period, end of story.

“What you see here is a graphics generator adding graphics to a video signal.”

Yes. And it isn’t likely that an animated key was randomly inserted over the Cheney feed that, when played at a standard 30 frames per second, magically repeated itself at every 15 frames or 30 fields per second so as to escape notice.

It does look like operator error. Somewhere along the line someone probably puched up the CG (Chyron, Character Gen). -keyed it in – and the text had a flashing X in it. I bet it was most likely that someone was playing around in a control room to cause this.

“The video I saw the “X” did not appear suddenly as in a “take” it was “faded” in and then back out.”

It’s rather hard to maintain that an 15 frame animated key that has been faded into and out of a live video feed is a “glitch.”

“Standard NTSC video is 30 frames per second. To pull this off, an animation had to be created, striped to tape, and overlayed or keyed over the Cheney feed. It’s possible it was a mistake. It isn’t likely it was a mistake.”

Actually no ‘animation’ has to be created. The most basic broadcast character generator can flash text at varying speeds. This was most likely sloppy production of a live event. It is possible that someone did it intentionally, but if that were the case, then they would have made the rest of the text at the bottom of the screen more legible.

“I bet it was most likely that someone was playing around in a control room to cause this.”

It could have been. The thing that bothers me, though, is the fact that this wasn’t a normal video feed. The only way it could have been created was to be animated frame-by-frame. The only way it could be seen was by someone who could step through each frame of video to see what was there.

But, at the very least, the character generator had to be programmed to “flash” the text every 15 frames or so. And someone had to be monitoring the source, in order to perform the fade.

Programming a cg to flash takes about 3 keystrokes and can be done in less than a second. And I would venture to say that this cg defaults to 2 flashes per second. As I said, it’s likely that someone in another control room was doing something with a CG and had it over some video, and that control room was accidentally ‘punched up.’ When I was doing production and setting up the CG I would put it over a video source (I usually used the net feed), as when the playback tapes for your production are stopped you generally lose sync and don’t see the CG overlay properly.

In non-linear editing, an X is often imposed over a video transition that has not been rendered yet.

The first X pops up just before the text changes. It could be the switcher’s symbol for a cross-fade for dissolve, and it ended up on the program instead of a preview monitor.

Also, part of the black writing looks like a handwritten “18”, but that’s all I can make out.

The first X pops up just before the text changes. It could be the switcher’s symbol for a cross-fade for dissolve, and it ended up on the program instead of a preview monitor.

Also, part of the black writing looks like a handwritten “18”, but that’s all I can make out.

It is lower-case, black arial font. I couldn’t make it all out, but it says “begins”, starting at the right side of the “W” in wrong. It also says “of black” on top of a tilted CNN logo in thebottom right of the screen, on the sam line as “begins”.

It helps to play with the image brightness and text tools in photoshop.

Everyone is trying to understand what the black writing is. The black writing is simply just the same as the white i.e. “IT IS WRONG TO CRITICIZE” but set to black and slightly offset from the white so that it has the effect of blocking it out so what the viewer actually can read see and read is Cheney with a big black X on his face and the words: CHENEY: I DO NOT BELIEVE.

To me this is obvious and if someone already pointed this out then I apologize for repeating the point.

I think that usually politicians give a copy of the speech to the media before they actually deliver the speech and this was probably done with CNN, thereby giving them time to design and carry out this blatant and vile attack on the Vice President of The United States of America.

If you look carefully at Political Teen’s video clip, especially if you step through it frame by frame, you will see the the appearance and disappearance of the black X corresponds exactly with two successive updates of the crawler text at the bottom. I also notice that the black X fades in and fades out, which is exactly what happens to the crawler text as it is updated. They do this so the text appears to move more smoothly, rather than jerking across the screen.

So, this tells me whatever equipment they use to generate the crawler is also the equipment that generated the black X. I have to assume that this eqipment has control of the whole screen, not just a strip at the bottom. Parameters like text size, color, font, postion, speed of crawl, and so forth should all be programmable. Somebody at CNN has the job of feeding new material into the crawler. That person is probably having a conversation with his or her boss this morning.

It says “Transition begins after 5 frames of black”. This was determined by taking frames of the video with the X present and without the X present, and doing a subtraction, which left only those parts of the image that had changed. That clearly revealed the mystery message. The question is, then, is this a standard message that the equipment gives during routine operation, or was it added in by a malicious operator as a CYA to deflect blame away from himself and onto the equipment? I can’t answer this, I am only speculating.

Let’s just remember that in the recent past we’ve had the zoomed in note for a bathroom break scandal, the Condi “satan eyes” scandal, and all the lies being spewed about the Plame affair and the WMD’s. Does anyone really believe that this X was accidently placed over Cheney’s face?

UPDATE 11/22 0729hrs pst

While I was asleep it appears some new information has come out, the most important being that CNN has stated a control room staffer laughed when the X appeared:

CNN management has launched an internal investigation into how a giant black ‘X’ mark appeared over Vice President Dick Cheney’s face — as he delivered a speech from Washington on Monday!

“We are taking this matter very, very seriously, and I can assure you no one at this network would ever deliberately place an ‘X’ over the vice president’s face,” a top CNN source, who asked not to be named at this time, said from New York.

A well-placed CNN insider claims a control room staffer “laughed” when the image appeared shortly after 11 am.

[…]A rival network news director asks: “When has an ‘X’ ever aired on CNN before? Who had the graphic sitting in the key signal? Who generated the ‘X’?”

Also the Dan Report has solved the hidden words mystery:

Check out the new shirt available at Cafepress:

Here is where these assclowns can be contacted:

UPDATE 11/22 1841hrs pst

Home from work and catching up on the new happenings with the “unintentional” X’ing of Cheney. First there is this Drudge headline:

CNN: ‘IT WAS A COMPUTER BUG’

‘IT IS NOT SOMETHING WE CAN RE-CREATE TO SHOW YOU HOW IT HAPPENED’

CNN on Tuesday morning hoped to explain how and why a black ‘X’ flashed over Vice President Dick Cheney’s face during a live speech.

[…]CNN transcript:

CNN anchor/reporter Daryn Kagan: “I have come back into the control room because we want to explain something to you that happened on this newscast yesterday. During our live coverage of a speech by Vice President Dick Cheney there was a technical malfunction, you’ll see it here.

It involved a switcher, something we call a switcher. It’s a machine that we use to switch between visual elements.

Now, that glitch resulted in that ‘X’ that you saw being flashed briefly across the screen as the vice president was speaking.

[…]Joining me to explain what happened Steve our CNN director of technical operations.

We’re putting you on the hot seat here.

People at home are watching Vice President Dick Cheney.

What happened?

What were we trying to create behind the scenes?

At the end of the speech the plan was to do, to have a CNN logo up on the screen and use that as the way of getting back from the speech back to you on camera and one of the many graphics we use here at CNN.

MORE

A majority of graphics we use on the air, we use as a big x to identify at what point should the tape be cued up.

This is the x you see in the control room but it is never meant to be seen on the air.

It’s being used.

The controlroom will use that kbrx to cue up the CNN logo to get it ready for air and as you see there, getting it ready.

We’re doing this now, live. We’re showing what you’re trying to do exactly.

That is what was being prepared during the speech and due to the technical glitch that happened with the switcher, it accidentally got on the air because of the switch.

And it’s the sort of thing that just like your computer will glitch and will suddenly lock up and do something weird, our equipment does the same thing on occasions.

ot something we can re-create to show you what happened. Which is a really important point.

First of all, a switcher is a machine, not a person.

Correct.

When we were talking about doing the segment and said, let’s do it again. You can’t make it happen on purpose.

That’s correct.

For all the conspiracy theories out there and we want to have someone who is trying to make a statement about the nature of vice president cheney’s speech, it’s a computer bug. Ours was in front of millions of people.

That is absolutely correct. As it goes. So, we’re getting it fixed, i hope?

Yes, much like you have to reboot your computer from time to time, we’re going to reboot our computer from time to time to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Which is complete and utter bullshit. You can’t recreate the problem? Of course you can, that is a tool people use to fix computers for god sake.

Check out this great article at the Omega Letter:

The mainstream media’s war against the administration has come out into the open — they aren’t even pretending to be fair and balanced anymore.

They’ve even dropped the pretense that they care what effect their attacks have on either America as a country or America’s forces in combat.

Vice President Dick Cheney gave a speech before the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC in which he took on charges that the administration lied to make its case for war with Iraq.

It was no ordinary speech; Cheney came down hard on charges that the president lied, quoting John McCain’s statement that claiming the president lied was itself ‘a lie’.

Cheney said in his speech that criticism is justified, but that lies were over the top.

While Cheney was saying that criticism was justified, CNN flashed a big, black ‘X’ across his face. The ‘X’ pulsed on-screen, appearing every 1/15th of a second, not long enough to be picked up easily by the naked eye, but long enough to implant a subliminal ‘message’ in viewer’s brains.

CNN defended itself by claiming it was a malfunctioning ‘switcher’. A ‘switcher’ is the term to describe a special effect when the camera view ‘switches’ — like going from tight shot out to a wider two-camera view, or to flash a name or title across the screen over a speaker.

So, CNN’s ‘defense’ against implanting a negative subliminal message over the vice president’s face while he was giving a speech is this.

They just happened to have a big, black ‘X’ already loaded on their switcher, just in case they needed that particular graphic at some point, (but certainly not during a political speech by the Vice President!)

Then, by accident, (honest!) that durned switcher just picked that particular image at random and began flashing it at subliminal speeds (all by itself) over Cheney’s face at just the right time to implant a message that the Vice President was lying as he was defending the administration against charges of lying.

CNN’s technical trick was largely ignored by the mainstream media. A Google search using the keywords “Cheney and CNN” turned up only two hits on the story, “Dick Cheney Rated X by CNN?” in Arizona’s National Ledger and “Cheney Continues Attack on President’s War Critics” in the Arizona Daily Star.

That isn’t to say those were the only outlets to carry the story. By changing the keywords to ‘Cheney and X’ I found a total of six stories. But using the keywords ‘Cheney’ and ‘speech’ I got six thousand, three hundred and seventy hits, so the speech got plenty of coverage. (Just not CNN’s use of subliminals)

Most news accounts carried a few lines from the Cheney speech, followed by comments from Democrats like John Kerry and Harry Reid.

The ‘Michigan Daily’ said nothing about CNN’s subliminal editorial comment, but chose instead to quote Harry Reid’s comment that Cheney “missed another opportunity to come clean with the American people and lay out a strategy for success in Iraq.? (“Cheney’s a liar”)

In case the ‘Michigan Daily’s’ readers didn’t get the message, the account closed with a quote from Kerry telling reporters that Bush and Cheney have ?misled America and they’re still misleading America.?

(“Cheney’s a big, fat, double-dog liar”)

How about this blast from the past, does this show manipulation by the Communist News Network?

CNN awarded Vice President Al Gore six percent more of the TV screen when both he and George W. Bush were shown on a split-screen during Tuesday night?s debate, the New York Post?s Richard Johnson revealed. The other networks, he added, split their screens into equal halves.

In an October 6 story noted by MRC Communications Director Liz Swasey, “Gore?s the Winner Any Way TV Ted Slices It,” Johnson disclosed that Republicans “suspect CNN?s manipulation of the pooled camera feeds was done to help Gore.” Here?s an excerpt from Johnson?s story:

Brian Propp, a former TV-station engineer who watched the debate on CNN International, noticed the inequity.

“Its impact was to give Gore a more commanding presence on the screen, and Bush a visually reduced impact,” Propp said in an e-mail to Bush headquarters after he measured each side of the split screen with graph paper.

The split-screen scandal comes after The New York Times attacked the Republicans in a front-page story for showing the word “rats” for a fraction of a second in a health-care ad slamming bureaucrats.

“They were all upset about a tenth of a second of a subliminal ?rats,? but they have no problem with 90 minutes of George W. Bush being diminished,” one Republican scoffed.

CNN:
One CNN Center, Box 105366, Atlanta, GA 30303
Phone: 404-827-1500, Fax: 404-827-1784,
Email: community@cnn.com
CNN Washington Bureau: 820 First St. N.E., Washington, DC 20002,
Phone: 202-898-7900, Fax: 202-515-2266,
Email: cnn.onair@cnn.com

Other’s Blogging:

Michelle Malkin
California Conservative
The Cassandra Page
Stop The ACLU
Blogs For Bush
Riehl World View
Don Surber
Daily Pundit
The Daily Me
Radioactive Chef

Let’s just remember that in the recent past we’ve had the zoomed in note for a bathroom break scandal, the Condi “satan eyes” scandal, and all the lies being spewed about the Plame affair and the WMD’s. Does anyone really believe that this X was accidently placed over Cheney’s face?

Curt

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