By Astrid Goh and Medha Imam
An online video of Tuesday’s State of the Union speech released on House Speaker John Boehner’s official YouTube channel did not include two short segments of the president’s original speech — one on climate change and another prohibiting torture by the government.
“It was inadvertent, and we’re working with YouTube to figure out what happened,” Boehner’s press secretary Cory Fritz said in an email response to questions from Medill News Service.
Both The White House and the House Republicans released individual screenings of President Barack Obama’s speech, displaying graphs and statistics alongside the video of Obama speaking. President Barack Obama’s address. The video on Boehner’s channel skipped this part of Obama’s statement on climate change:
“…the evidence by saying they’re not scientists; that we don’t have enough information to act. Well, I’m not a scientist, either. But you know what–I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA, and NOAA, and at our major universities. And the best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we do not act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration, conflict, and hunger around the globe”.
And it deleted Obama’s statement that his administration has prohibited torture and criticized anti-Semitism:
“As Americans, we respect human dignity, even when we’re threatened, which is why I’ve prohibited torture, and worked to make sure our use of new technology like drones is properly constrained. It’s why we speak out against the deplorable anti-Semitism that has resurfaced in certain parts of the world. It’s why we continue to reject offensive…”
