CENSORSHIP

State Dept. Admits Removing Fox Question From Briefing Video

“A specific request was made to excise that portion of the briefing.”

The State Department admitted Wednesday to removing a question posed by a Fox News reporter from a press briefing video. In December 2013, correspondent James Rosen asked then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki whether the department would lie in order to preserve the secrecy of sensitive backdoor negotiations between two countries. Rosen said he later discovered the question had been removed from the State Department press briefing from that day, canceled out with a white flash. “I asked the office of the legal adviser to look at this, including a look at any rules that we had in place,” spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday. “In so doing, they learned that a specific request was made to excise that portion of the briefing.” Kirby added that all future briefings will be “immedaitely and permanently archived in their entirety.” He was not able to say who requested the edit or for what reason.