Funeral Update

We reported on Wednesday about ABC’s soliciting the opportunity to film a funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq yesterday, to coincide with President Bush’s inauguration. ABC pulled the solicitation later in the day; we assumed this was because they realized that we had linked to their advertisement. Several readers have pointed out that the item may have been pulled because ABC found the funeral it was looking for:

They did indeed “find” one, and showed about 30 seconds of tape of it during World News Tonight on Thursday. Peter Jennings did a voice-over while the footage was shown. His commentary was to the effect of (not an exact quote, as I did not tape the program) “Almost at the same time the President was speaking, in Texas…” there was a funeral for a service man killed in Iraq by a road side bomb last week.
Even though they pulled their solicitation at their web site, they found a funeral that they were looking for.

The broadcast networks are at war with the Bush administration.
FURTHER UPDATE: Mudville Gazette has the transcript of the ABC broadcast.

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