Holy Shit

A big Holy Shit.

Caught by the intrepid John Aravosis:

NBC is investigating whether Bush eavesdropped on reporter Christiane Amanpour.

NBC's Andrea Mitchell asked New York Times reporter James Risen about it:

Mitchell: Do you have any information about reporters being swept up in this net?

Risen: No, I don't. It's not clear to me. That's one of the questions we'll have to look into the future. Were there abuses of this program or not? I don't know the answer to that

Mitchell: You don't have any information, for instance, that a very prominent journalist, Christiane Amanpour, might have been eavesdropped upon?

Risen: No, no I hadn't heard that.

NBC removed this question from the transcript of the interview.

But the question was heard, and when asked about it, NBC said this:

Unfortunately this transcript was released prematurely. It was a topic on which we had not completed our reporting, and it was not broadcast on 'NBC Nightly News' nor on any other NBC News program. We removed that section of the transcript so that we may further continue our inquiry.

In other words, they didn't change the transcript because the question asked was about something false, but because they actually were investigating it. Bbut the investigation had not yet proceeded to the point where the information was ready to be broadcast.

Holy shit.