and the check is in the mail, and i won't...
Posted on 04/08/2012 9:08:21 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
NBC News President Insists Zimmerman Edit 'Not a Deliberate Act to Misrepresent' By Matthew Sheffield Created 04/08/2012 - 2:12am
Following a series of anonymous leaks, NBC has released its first on-the-record statements regarding the internal investigation into its misleading audio clip of George Zimmerman's 9-1-1 call.
According to NBC, the controversial clip, which appeared during its "Today" morning news show, was edited deliberately by the producer to fit within time constraints and not for some other reason. Speaking to Reuters, NBC News president Steve Capus asserted that the individual, who has been fired but whose name has not been disclosed, had made "a mistake and not a deliberate act to misrepresent the phone call."
The misleading cut removed crucial seconds of Zimmerman's call during which the 9-1-1 operator inquired about the race of the man he was pursuing. In response to the question, Zimmerman stated that he believed the individual was of African extraction. The initial question was removed by NBC News while Zimmerman's answer was included.
To listen to the edited clip and the original, see video below from NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell who first broke the story on the March 29 edition of Fox News's "Hannity" program.
An excerpt from the Reuters story which gives more details into NBC's internal investigation and also credits NewsBusters and Breitbart.com as being instrumental in exposing the network's selective editing:
NBC News's decision to air an edited call from George Zimmerman to police in the moments before he shot Trayvon Martin was "a mistake and not a deliberate act to misrepresent the phone call," according the president of network's news division. [...]
Under growing public pressure to explain the incident, NBC News President Steve Capus provided Reuters with the fullest explanation to date of how the edited call made it on air and what the network is doing to prevent such a consequential error from happening again.
Capus confirmed a previous Reuters report that an internal network investigation had determined that a producer made the editing error, and that the network's editorial controls - including senior broadcast producer oversight, script editors and often legal and standards department reviews of sensitive material to be broadcast - simply missed the selective editing of the phone call.
He said the producer has been fired and "several people" involved were disciplined, though he declined to specify the nature of the disciplinary actions, saying they were internal personnel matters.
Sources at the network told Reuters on Thursday that NBC News executives did not know the emergency call was misleadingly edited until news reports surfaced days later on blogs including newsbusters.org and Breitbart.com. [...]
As part of the investigation, the producer who edited the call was questioned extensively about motivation, and it was determined that the person had cut the video clip down to meet a maximum time requirement for the length of the segment - a common pressure in morning television - and inadvertently edited the call in a way that proved misleading.
NBC News has apologized for the incident, saying in a statement to Reuters earlier this week that there was "an editing error in the production process," but insisting the results of the internal investigation would not be announced publicly.
Capus said that the network "takes its responsibility seriously" and has undertaken rigorous efforts to formalize the editorial safeguards in place at the network.
In a separate incident showing media "synergy" at its worst, NBC's online news arm, MSNBC.com, perpetuated the same false edit in text form which was first exposed by Breitbart.com blogger Dan Riehl. After Riehl pointed out the misinformation, MSNBC.com corrected its story but did not inform readers of the article that a correction had been made until NewsBusters pointed this out March 30.
The repurposing of the misleading clip to an online story suggests the problem is more widespread than what Capus and what NBC have let on, however. What hasn't been revealed to the public is when the truncated call transcript was inserted into the MSNBC.com story which was dated March 21.
The public has also not been informed about the process by which the false Zimmerman transcript was inserted. Clearly there were no time constraints at work in the construction of the web version. Why then was the edited transcript used?
Unfortunately for NBC, despite its best attempts to delay releasing any sort of news until Easter Sunday, the story about this fiasco is going to go on and won't dissipate, due in part to the network's strategy of releasing as little information as possible.
Suppose Fox News airs a story about President Obama's religion and a close personal friend of Obama's is being quoted. What if "Everyone thinks he is a Muslim, but I know for a fact. He is not, in any way, a Muslim" became "Everyone thinks he is a Muslim, But I know for a fact. He is not, in any way, a Muslim".
Now let's see the media uproar if Fox says it was unintentional editing for the sake of a time slot.
BS! This is just another LIE from NBC!
If it was not deliberate then no one should have been fired. Time constraints? They could have saved more time by not showing a picture of 12 year old Trayvon. The president of nbc should be fired for lying.
The mainstream press simply does NOT know how to write this story without applying their template of lies and deceit. Now that the facts are coming to light and the lies and deceit are being exposed, they are running to the shadows like the roaches they are. It won’t work because no amount of apologies will cover up the fact that NBC, ABC, CNN, etc. have lied and twisted the facts intentionally. George Zimmerman (and his lawyers) will be a wealthy men (if Zimmerman’s not murdered by one of Holder’s “people”).
I think they are clicking wine glasses over there and planning on a hot summer and fall. No mistake.
See ya in court, chumps...
Liberals pushing a Marxist agenda to race bait via an edited taps, which got the blacks in a tizzy.
Zimmerman, who will not be convicted, should sue for a cool billion dollars.
Tell Immelt to pay his fair share.
Bump!
And if was just an innocent mistake, why ruin his career by firing him?
Do they not have disciplinary actions for innocent mistakes, other than ending someones career by firing them? Did he have previous disciplinary actions?
If not, why fire him it it was such an innocent mistake?
Why not the name of the individual who did the editing?
Perhaps it was done because of raciest hate?
” has undertaken rigorous efforts to formalize the editorial safeguards in place at the network.”
Shouldn’t a credible news organization have editorial safeguards formalized from the get-go?
“time constraints” = we only had time enough to lie.
How does he know? Was he there? Oh, he trusts all his little lefty employees to never lie?
Then why fire such an innocent person and destroy their career?
and the check is in the mail, and i won't...
NBC has a larger problem...they unleashed Sharpton, allowing him to cover his own hate, on his own show.
This breaks new ground. Never before in broadcasting history has a network allowed a commentator to use his program as a propaganda site...to cover himself, making propaganda.
Will NBC let this stand?
“If not, why fire him it it was such an innocent mistake? “
Here’s hoping that they didn’t pay off this person sufficiently, or somehow they get dragged into the coming lawsuit so we can get them on the witness stand and get at the truth of the matter.
Oh, I see. They were fired for ignorant editing? Makes sense to me// rolling eyes.
From an insider: “The original version they were planning was the following but they couldn’t find all the words on the tape to splice together, so they went for a simpler, more subtle version. They were planning to hire a lefty special effects studio to computer generate the missing words but time was running short. They didn’t want another network or Huffington or Politico to beat them to it.”
Zim: “It’s another one of those damn black guys looking around to buy drugs, break into a home, or rape a white woman or white Hispanic woman or a Hispanic white woman or a Hispanic woman in that order. I’m going to shoot his ass the first chance I get.”
The dispatcher says, “You don’t need to to that.”
Zim: “F that! That black Negro is dead when I see him!”
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