Quick Takes
“Frontline” re-cuts segment with official after complaint from Interior Department
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Frontline has re-cut a broadcast interview with an administration official in which one of his responses was used to answer a different question. Every reporter and editor knows that shouldn’t be done, writes PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler. “That’s just fundamental journalistic ethics,” he notes.Both the broadcast and transcript versions of Frontline’s interview with Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, David J. Hayes are online in the latest Ombudsman Column. After the show on the BP oil disaster, The Spill, ran on Oct. 26, Matt Lee-Ashley, communications director at Interior, complained to Frontline.