The News about the News

The following is a great example of not believing everything you read. At least Daily Kos is on top of this story.

CNN reporting:

Geithner: Treasury pushed for bonus loophole

(CNN) — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told CNN Thursday his department asked Sen. Chris Dodd to include a loophole in the stimulus bill that allowed bailed-out insurance giant American International Group to keep its bonuses.

CNN transcript (note the highlighted section):

Velshi: Let's just talk a little moment again about those payments and the legal ramifications of doing anything about it. Sen. [Chris] Dodd says that he had a clause that was put into the stimulus bill that basically allowed these payments to be made to people at AIG in this particular unit, and he says that somebody at Treasury asked him to put it in.

Geithner: Let me just start by saying that [Senate Banking Committee] Chairman Dodd has played an enormously important leadership role in this, and he's doing the right thing in trying to make sure that the assistance we provide doesn't go to benefit people that shouldn't benefit from these things. And I am enormously impressed by the importance of what he's trying to do in this case.

Velshi: But somebody -- have we figured out who told him to put this clause in?

Geithner: This provision? We expressed concern about this specific version. We wanted to make sure it was strong enough to survive legal challenge. But we also worked with him to strengthen the overall framework, and his bill has this very important provision we're relying on now to go back and see if we can recoup payments that were made that there was no legal ability to block.

Velshi: But inadvertently, might somebody at Treasury have told Sen. Dodd to do something that has now resulted in these payments not being able to ...

Geithner: No, again, what we did is just express concern about the vulnerability of a specific part of this provision, the legal challenge, as you would expect us to do, that's part of the legislative process, but again, his bill also has this very important provision that allows us to go back and see if we can recoup these payments, and we're going to explore that, but in any case, we're going to make sure that the American people are compensated for any payments we can recoup.

The key point here is that while Geithner does confirm that Treasury spoke to Dodd's office and expressed concern about whether the clause would hold up to legal challenge, when Velshi asked him specifically whether Treasury instructed Dodd to do something that resulted in the AIG bonuses, Geithner said no.

Now perhaps there's more to the story than what Geithner is saying. But he didn't say what CNN reported he said.

And that means CNN's transcript is at odds with CNN's reporting.