On Monday’s “Media Buzzmeter” podcast, FNC host Howard Kurtz accused members of the media of “trying to rehabilitate” U.S. Senate candidate and Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) by giving him “a somewhat sympathetic interview” with closed-captioning where he can perform better.
Kurtz said, [relevant remarks begin around 9:20] “[I]f John Fetterman can somehow pull it out, and there’s no question in my mind that the media — certain anchors, Don Lemon, for example…are trying to rehabilitate him with these close-captioned interviews and giving him sort of a do-over. And he does much better. Guess what, if you’re just having a somewhat sympathetic interview with somebody on CNN or MSNBC and you have the closed-captioning, he can speak pretty well. It was the fast-paced debate with 15-second rebuttals and so forth where he, several times, just had trouble making sense or keeping up.”
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