TV Newser reports that yet another NBC News correspondent, Lilia Luciano, has been fired due to dubious editing of the Zimmerman call to the police.
Jeralyn Merritt, who first noted the use of a misleading edit on the March 22 Today Show, has an exhaustive timeline of the use of the two misleading edits, for a total of three uses on the Today Show and one on the NBC Nightly News.
And for comic relief, turn to the Media Encoder, Brian Stelter of the NY Times. Mr. Stelter doesn't understand or won't report that the problem at NBC runs beyond two problematic airings on the Today Show. Yet I remain confident that if Fox News had misreported something unflattering to Obama his coverage would be more comprehensive.
Here is the TV Newser report:
In a story for the “Today” show on March 20, Luciano used part of the George Zimmerman 911 call in which an entire phrase (italicized below) was taken from a later part of the conversation:
Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good or on drugs or something. He’s got his hand in his waistband. And he’s a black male.
Dispatcher: Are you following him?
Zimmerman: Yeah.
Dispatcher: Okay, we don’t need you to do that.
Here is Media Lapdog Brian Stelter of the Times, putting into a more helpful perspective for his "Don't vex me with tales of a misbehaving liberal media" readership:
Ms. Luciano was the correspondent on a “Today” show segment on March 22 that presented Mr. Zimmerman’s description of Mr. Martin as a “black male” grossly out of context. The editing of the audiotape made it seem as if Mr. Zimmerman volunteered the information, when in fact a 911 dispatcher had asked Mr. Zimmerman for the information.
No, the March 22 edit was different from the March 20 edit (although Ms. Luciano was involved with both segments). That would be obvious even to Times readers if Mr. Stelter printed both edits, so he doesn't. Fortunately TV Newser provides a helpful reminder:
Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.
If we can persuade Mr. Stelter to re-read TV Newser he will discover there are *three* problematic edits from the Today Show. For some reason he seems to be reporting this in a way that minimizes NBC's miscues. If we can get him to read Jeralyn Merritt, he will learn that there was also a fourth bad edit on the March 19 NBC Nightly News. Here's hoping!
Meanwhile, here is his hard-hitting Media Encoding coverage of the March 20 and March 19 bad edits:
According to a person with knowledge of the NBC investigation, the error in her March 22 originated in the script of a report on WTVJ, the NBC-owned station in Miami. A correspondent for WTVJ, Jeff Burnside, was reportedly fired last month.
¶By borrowing from the WTVJ report, Ms. Luciano and her production team repeated the mistake, according to the person, who was not authorized to talk to speak about it publicly.
¶A second person, however, said that the NBC News investigation was unrelated to the local station and that the error on March 22 did not originate in the WTVJ script.
My guess is that few people will take from that the news that the NBC Nightly News had a bad edit on March 19 which was recycled by Ms. Luciano for the March 20 Today Show.
As an aid, let me excerpt and simplify Ms. Merritt's excellent timeline:
- Pete Williams, March 19 NBC Nightly News, 6:30 pm ET, Misquote version #1 ('he's a black male')
- Luciano, March 20 Today Show, Misquote version #1
- Luciano, March 22 Today Show, Misquote version #2 ('he looks black')
- Ron Williams Allen, March 27 Today Show, Misquote version #2
Just to square the circle, it is possible that on March 20 Ms. Luciano was a victim of someone else's bad editing, since she recycled the March 19 Nightly News tape. Then, with that error inducing brain-lock, she managed a comparable error for the March 22 Today show, and got herself fired for that. In which case, who was the fall guy for the March 19/20 edit? Has to be Jeff Burnside, yes? Per Poynter:
WTVJ reporter Jeff Burnside was fired Friday after being involved in editing a tape of George Zimmerman’s 911 call before he shot Trayvon Martin....
...
The WTVJ video, though edited similarly, was not the one that aired on NBC’s “Today” show, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The video that aired on the “Today” show actually came from NBC’s Southeast headquarters, also based in south Florida.
Baffling. Well, when Brian Stelter reports on three bad edits at Today and one at NBC Nightly News I will feel better. Right now he has described two bad edits at Today and linked to the Poynter account of a guy fired at a local affiliate. Unsatisfying, especially in light of this Poyner correction:
Correction: This post originally stated that the WTVJ edited video aired on the “Today” show. It did not. The edited video that aired on “Today” came from NBC’s Southeastern headquarters.
Well, wherever it came from, a bad edit appeared on Today on March 20; Times reader relying on the Media Encoder will never figure that out.
It's water under the bridge now, but back in early April when we discovered shenanigans at NBC6 Miami, I had noticed that in addition to revising three website stories that had included the "he’s up to no good. He looks black" edit, NBC6 had revised a different AP / NBC story from March 17 with a different presentation. I was not able to recover the original version so we are left wondering whether that story has a connection to either of the bad edits shown here. No doubt the comprehensive NBC investigation will apprise us of that.
LATE ADD: 'Narcisco' advises us that the March 27 NBC reporter is Ron Allen, not Ron Williams.
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