Video: CNN reporter denies heckling McCain; Update: Press conference video appears to support Ware (bumped)

posted at 1:40 pm on April 2, 2007 by Allahpundit
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Sort of. He denies having said anything at the press conference — but strictly speaking, he wasn’t accused of having said anything. Here’s what Drudge reported:

During a live press conference in Baghdad, Senators McCain and Graham were heckled by CNN reporter Michael Ware. An official at the press conference called Ware’s conduct “outrageous,” saying, “here you have two United States Senators in Bagdad giving first-hand reports while Ware is laughing and mocking their comments. I’ve never witnessed such disrespect. This guy is an activist not a reporter.”

It sounds like he may have been laughing theatrically when they were talking about walking around Baghdad. Soledad O’Brien asks him point blank if he was laughing, and he ducks the question by insisting that he never said a word. In which case, it might be hard to tell what happened from the video of the press conference that he’s encouraging people to look at.

The video’s nowhere to be found yet, incidentally. Maybe it’ll be available at MNF-I sometime later today.

I like the dramatic contempt in his voice when he says the word “blog,” too. Although not as much as I like the reaction it must have generated in blog-hatin’ Matt Drudge.

Update: The video wasn’t playing for awhile there. In case it shorts out again, Spruiell has the transcript — and a good point about the absurdity of the media objecting to anonymous sources.

Update: Raw Story’s got two videos of the presser, one of the introductory remarks and another of the Q&A. Ware is visible in the right foreground, in the white shirt, in the second video when the camera cuts to a shot of the full room. Assuming RS hasn’t played games with the clip, I don’t see anything that looks like heckling or laughing. McCain and Graham are unperturbed and there are no interruptions. The second clip does cut out immediately after the press conference ends, with Ware still sitting in his seat and trying to ask a question, so it’s possible he did something then. But in that case, Drudge’s report is still wrong — he said the heckling happened “during” the presser, while McCain and Graham were speaking.

Update: As of 1:50 p.m., the McCain/Ware items have disappeared entirely from Drudge’s front page. Let’s see if Raw Story forces them back on.

Update: A reader e-mails with a point worth noting: the Raw Story article credits a Michael Ware fan site with providing the video.

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