Posted on 08/27/2014 12:47:08 PM PDT by Kaslin
For more than 24-hours, CNN has been regularly playing a clip of audio which purports to reveal the exact moment when 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot by Officer Darren Wilson. Each time it was played, the CNN anchors and hosts noted that the sound could not be independently verified by the network, but it was just too good to wait to play it for viewers.
CNN’s ratings have been phenomenal since the violence in Ferguson erupted, and the network has displayed a tendency in the past to latch onto any development no matter how dubious that keeps a ratings-grabbing story alive. The suspect audio supposedly of the moment when police shot and killed Brown may be another of these moments.
On Wednesday morning, CNN’s Michaela Pereira invited two former law enforcement officials on the program to discuss the authenticity of the tape.
“I’ve told your producers that for all I know this is one of Howard Stern’s punk people,” former LAPD officer David Klinger said. “It came out, what, two weeks after the event, and so I don’t have a high degree of confidence in it.”
“But, it could be real,” he added without much enthusiasm.
Klinger noted that his first inclination is “someone is trying to punk CNN.”
CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes seemed to share Klinger’s opinion. He left open the possibility that the audio, which to him sounded dubbed, may have been manipulated by CNN’s producers before it was aired. “My producer says that’s all we were given,” Pereira said.
“When I heard this yesterday, I thought the exact same thing: it’s a hoax,” Fuentes added.
He went on to note that, even if the tape is real, it supports the claims of both Brown and Wilson’s supporters and is not of much evidentiary value.
CNN guests tell CNN their Brown shooting audio may be a hoax
If this audio does prove to be a hoax, it is not an understandable mistake that anyone could have made – if only because everyone didn’t make it, just CNN. When a story that still commands significant audience attention runs out of facts to report, incidents like these are more likely to occur.
CNN’s coverage of the events in Ferguson has, for the most part, been both compelling and informative. The ratings the network has earned are deserved. However, if this audio does turn out to be inauthentic, it would be another opportunity for CNN to learn the lessons of their saturation coverage of the missing Malaysian passenger airliner; sacrificing credibility for ratings is never a good tradeoff.
In all the hoopla, I forgot, they pick up the casings and examine the gun and magazine as just basic stuff.
Ummm...If CNN had one person with one inquisitive bone in his/her body....couldn’t they re-enact it?
Ask the sex chatter where he lives, fire off some rounds at the Brown Memorial pavement stain, and see if his computer microphone picks it up in the same manner.
At least they will have a notion of plausibility...still wouldn’t be proof, but it at least is some vetting.
Or screw it, put it on the air without knowing jack about its authenticity.
Bilge water?
“I think it should be illegal for programs to profit off of news. Broadcasting news should be a public service. Congress should ban news programs from having commercials.”
How Progressive of you Cowboy Bob.
The important thing to remember is that it COULD have happened that way, and that’s all that matters.
LOL!!
“When I heard this yesterday, I thought the exact same thing: it’s a hoax,”
Exactly how transparent actually transparent.
To my ear there is a sound effects quality to the gunshots. The FBI will be able to tell if they are the same sound repeated or 10 distinct sounds.
These CNN guests are clearly RACISTS!
Just tune into NPR for that flavor of spin. The function of news programs is to get audience. That people think the news “informs” them is just an artifact of public gullibility.
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