Apparently, either a video glitch or not-glitch resulted in a few flashes of an “X” over Vice President Cheney’s face while he was delivering a speech. A number of conservative bloggers are criticizing CNN under the assumption that the glitch (or not-glitch) was both deliberate and an example of political bias.

Sorry guys, I don’t see it. I recognize the possibility, but I also recognize a much larger number of possibilities for actual glitches in video production. True, I don’t work in live video, but I’ve seen software bugs and unintuitive behavior cause bizarre flashes where one video track has been accidentally merged onto another. It looks to me like something similar happened with CNN. This could have happened at the venue, or anywhere between bouncing the feed up to a satellite and back to earth, or maybe in CNN’s studios in Washington or Atlanta. It could have been because someone was sitting on a button or briefly brushed one a few times.

If you watch the video, additional text seems to appear below the X, partially obscuring the news ticker on the bottom. The online version isn’t of high enough resolution to make that text legible. But perhaps someone who recorded it can decipher the rest. My assumption is that a placeholder track got superimposed on the live feed by mistake.

There are plenty of examples of media bias that are far more provable. To latch onto a few flashes of an “X” as major evidence of bias—when no such evidence exists beyond the act itself—undercuts the possibility of being taken seriously when talking about the more tangible stories.

Maybe CNN should get the benefit of the doubt. There’s an old saying: Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence. Given CNN’s recent performance in the marketplace, that statement seems apt.