NBC's "He Looks Black" - Now You See It, Now You Don't

NBC is busy taking down the evidence of its repeated usage of its bogus edit of the George Zimmerman 911 call. This follows the firing of a producer for the use of the same bad edit on the March 27 Today Show. Left unanswered - what about the March 22 use on the Today Show? [LATE ADD: a third usage of "He looks black" has been found and edited out of existence (but not Google Cache!) at NBC 6 Miami, as described below.  When will the Elite Media sniff a cover-up?]

Twelve days ago Dan Riehl found this at MSNBC:

“This guy looks like he’s up to no good … he looks black,” Zimmerman told a police dispatcher from his car. His father has said that Zimmerman is Hispanic, grew up in a multiracial family, and is not racist.

The use of ellipsis clearly indicate that the conversation was clipped.  This version has since been re-edited (without any explanation) to include the complete exchange.

Yesterday the discovery by Les Jones of two similar bad edits at NBC 6 Miami for stories from March 19 and March 20 was widely broadcast by the InstaPundit.  As of this writing, those stories have been "fixed" by the web editors to eliminate the troublesome passages (and are marked as updated April 9; the specific update is unexplained). Fortunately, the original versions live on in Google Caches and screen shots taken by Les Jones, shown below.

And on Monday Jeralyn Merritt discovered, with Lexis, this Today Show transcript from March 22 with the same bad edit.  So far that is still online, but a screenshot is below.

[And let me add - in the updates I discover at least one, possibly two new NBC 6 Miami stories from Mar 17 and Mar 19 that were re-edited on April 9 and *may have* contained the bad edit]

So, it seems to be a bit of a race - can NBC sweep this down the memory hole before the crowd notices?

They just might succeed - the firing of a producer for one bad edit on the March 27 Today Show got a lot of attention and the Daily Caller knows the score but I have seen no Elite Media mention of the scope of this problem: twice on the Today Show plus twice at NBC 6 Miami plus once at MSNBC (which was their version of an NBC 6 Miami story) makes five appearances of the bad edit, yet the media coverage is of a producer fired for one March 27 use.  Three usages have been airbrushed away with no notice; Lexis will preserve the March 22 Today Show, but that won't matter if no one looks.

Just to duplicate Les Jones, here are the NBC 6 Miami originals:

Trayvon Martin's Shooter Defended By Fellow Neighborhood Watch Captain

The "He looks black" portion was dropped with no obvious replacement in the latest version.

And:

White House Monitoring Trayvon Martin Case as Protests Mount

A state stand your ground law might prevent any prosecution

Christina Hernandez, Jeff Burnside and Edward B. Colby

Lest you doubt, Jeralyn Merritt and Les Paul have some links and contemporaneous accounts of this reality.

Lets see if NBC can be prodded into an even more comprehensive investigation and report.  They can explain again how time constraints led to a mistake on the air twice and in print three times. 

WHICH CAME FIRST, THE VIDEO OR THE TEXT? One theory is that NBC 6 Miami posted this truncated Zimmerman quote on their website as text.  A few days later, a harried Today Show team grabbed the text story and cut the 911 audio to match it for the Mar 22 broadcast; a few days later, they re-ran the tape for the Mar 27 broadcast.

But why match audio to a text report that way? Surely Today is big enough to do their own editing their own way.  So, my guess is this - the Mar 19 text matches a Mar 19 (or earlier) broadcast by NBC 6 Miami, which originated the fateful edit. A few days later a harried NBC Today producer grabbed the NBC 6 tape and clipped what he/she needed, including the bum edit.

This kinda/sort exonerates the "Today" team, which is guilty of brain lock and failure to listen critically because they recycled a bad decision by NBC 6 Miami.

It also suggests that the extensive, intensive NBC investigation ought to have turned up the original offense in a NBC 6 Miami broadcast.  Did they? Can anyone find such a broadcast?  Does Lexis immortalize every word uttered at every local news outlet?

My *GUESS* as to the chain of events: A March 19 (or earlier) broadcast by NBC 6 Miami creates the bad edit.  The script is matched at the Mar 19 website story. The NBC 6 website recycles the edit in their follow-up story, which is mirrored at MSNBC.  Finally, the Today Show picks up the bad tape from NBC 6 and airs it on Mar 22 and again on Mar 27.

That results in the five uses we have seen and suggests there is a broadcast usage yet to surface.

SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND... CONFUSION: Why did NBC 6 Miami update these stories from March 17 and March 19 on April 9, after editing the two we have already flagged?  If someone could work some GoogleCache magic that would be lovely. Meanwhile, a fairly convincing clue is in the comments to the Mar 19 story, from 18 hours ago:

This article contains an extremely misleading "quote" of the 911 call and needs to be corrected! What he said was, "Hey we've had some break-ins in my neighborhood, and there's a real suspicious guy...This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about." The "he looks black" the response to a direct question asked by the dispatcher about whether Martin was "white, black, or Hispanic."

Oh, and my Kung Fu is unexpectedly adequate - here is a screen shot of the Google Cache as of April 6, complete with the phrase NBC 6 is trying to bury:

You won't see that now! And do note, the edit is different (my emphasis): "There's a real suspicious guy. This guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something. He look's black".

The March 17 story has a byline for Mike Schneider, an AP reporter, and a version of his story is widespread. However, I find this in the national version but *not* in the current version shown by NBC 6 Miami:

The teen had gone to a convenience store to buy candy and was walking back to his family’s home in the neighborhood.

“This guy looks like he is up to no good. He is on drugs or something,” Zimmerman told the dispatcher from his SUV. He added that the black teen had his hand in his waistband and was walking around looking at homes.

He has said he acted in self-defense, but Martin’s family said they are now more convinced than ever that Zimmerman should be charged in the shooting.

The NBC 6 version now omits the italicized paragraph.  Do note that what the AP used is fair, but on March 19 NBC 6 extends it to "This guy looks like he is up to no good. He is on drugs or something.  He looks black".

Is it possible they originally enhanced the AP story the same way and have now buried it? The Google Cache version I find at the NBC 6 website was saved on Apr 10, 2012 08:02:20 GMT, so it succeeds their April 9 re-edit. Irk me.  However, this suggestive but hardly conclusive comment from March 17 provokes my suspicions:

I find it odd that in his 911 call he keeps pointing out the boy is black and makes speculations: "He looks like he was on drugs", "His hand is in his waistband". He's the captain of a neighborhood WATCH not a neighborhood ACT.

The current version makes no mention of Zimmerman saying the boy was black; the AP version distributed elsewhere does not quote Zimmerman saying that, although it includes "He added that the black teen had his hand in his waistband", so maybe that is what this reader had in mind.  Well, the NBC cover-up is holding on this one.

TO BE FAIR:  NBC might want to segue to the old "Cut and Paste ate my brain" defense.  A mistake made once just rumbled through their echo chamber, with multiple editors at multiple sites noticing nothing.  Rodeo clowns without malice.  Might work. But did they ever give Bush a break when he rolled with the "I'm too stupid to be evil" defense?  They did not.

AND ON THE BRIGHT SIDE:  We can't get Howard Kurtz and the Bigfoot media watchers to take on NBC, but at least NBC is reading their critics.  Let me check to see if they hit the tipjar.  (There is no tipjar.)

We are keeping an eye on MediaGazer, a media-oriented aggregator and sister site to Memeorandum.

FOR THE LAUGH TRACK: Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC lectured the Orlando Sentinel on journalistic practice and ethics:

In our first ever web exclusive Rewrite, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell weighed in on how The Orlando Sentinel has been rewriting itself in the Trayvon Martin investigation.

...

"Let's hope The Orlando Sentinel does not have to rewrite itself again, and let's hope that The Orlando Sentinel learns how to answer simple press questions about routine editorial procedures at the newspaper," Lawrence said in the Rewrite.

Though an editor still refused to answer the specifics of exactly when and why they added the attributions to the article.

Lawrence ended with a warning message. He said, "If editors at The Orlando Sentinel go into "no comment" mode when asked about procedures that should be public, then journalism in Florida is in serious trouble when, more than ever, we need the best journalism they can deliver."

So say we all.

IF I COULD SAVE A TWITTER STREAM... NBC 6 Miami reporter Christine Hernandez is generous with her tweets and explains to R Crawford that the NY operation had the 911 tapes and her group just relied on those for their stories. So rather than listening to the raw 911 calls, the Miami reporters listened to the enhanced, edited versions provided by NY to squeeze out the news; hence, the bad edits for the website text.  Here we go:

Later, the Today Show uses the same bad edits twice, and gets busted the second time.

That is similar to my notion of one common source producing all the errors, although I would have guessed Miami would take the lead on the 911 tapes.  But the internet trumps mere geography, so maybe NYC has the coolest tech.

And by way of comparison, NBC Chicago has at its website the news it generated, which is Chicago-oriented stuff such as Oprah's reaction.  There is no "He looks black" version stored in Chicago, but why would there be?  NBC Miami would get the lead on all sorts of reporting for the Trayvon case.  (Since you ask, Miami is one of the ten NBC-owned stations, as is Chicago.

This would all be more persuasive if NBC admitted to using the bad edit repeatedly and explained why, contra Mr. O'Donnell, they toss problems down the memory hole.

IF THIS IS WRONG I DON'T WANT TO BE RIGHT: Now Ms. Hernandez, who was generous with her time, has me singing country and western. My question - if the bum edit was the primary source for NBC reporters, how come they got the quote and context right so often? (Cites needed, but I came up empty plenty of times looking for bogus Zimmerman quotes).

And having gotten it right, how come no one fixed the primary source weeks ago?  How come the March 19/20 stories were only flagged on April 9?

I have participated in ongoing institutional FUBARs, so the notion that Miami pointed out an error to New York which then ignored it is surely plausible.  Still, where is the investigation and apology?

Comments

[Rob Crawford]

cblodt -- Guttman is a particularly egregious example of agenda journalist.

[Melinda Romanoff]

narciso-

That was for sending Reno's pal, Theresa Gutierrez up here.

[Extraneus]

Heh.

Indiana’s new right-to-work law should be struck down because it infringes upon unions’ free speech rights by depriving them of the dues that fund their political speech, attorneys for a union challenging the law contend, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s so-called Citizens United ruling that eased restrictions on corporate campaign spending.

[Thomas Collins]

Now that the Koch Bros. and Adelson and other sugar daddies and sugar mommies have less incentive to spend dough on the GOP nomination race, perhaps they might consider dropping a hundred million in a trust for Zimmerman for private investigators, public relations folks, lawyers who channel Machiavelli in their mellow moods and Attila in their non-mellow moods, etc. Perhaps Crump and Martin's family would be less eager to press this if they knew they were going to be subjected to the Full Monte treatment (if I were in Zimmerman's shoes and I had the dough, I would already have the best private investigators figuring out whether Martin was in a heist and fence syndicate).

At the moment, however, I can see where Zimmerman would be focusing all the resources he has in keeping himself out of prison. With the tone that Obama and MSM and the New Black Panther Party and Holder (by not going after NBPP) have set in this case, Zimmerman is being set up to be a target of prison violence. I hope Angela Corey keeps this in mind as she conducts her investigation.

As I reflect on this matter, I end up concluding that the right side of the blogosphere has been incredibly restrained in this matter. In effect, the Executive Branch plus MSM have cooperated with NBPP to put a bounty on a man's head in a situation in which the available evidence indicates that either (i) the man committed no crime or (ii) if one wants to second guess his actions, at most could be charged with manslaughter (a dubious charge to be sure).

[fdcol63]

The first step in saving America is to purge the MSM of all of these lying bastards.

[NK]

MelindaR-- thanks for the link. Hmm... demands for justice from a UN bureaucrat? On Easter Sunday during a rather jovial conversation, a Lefty S-I-L couldn't help herself and said something about the USA should be more like the UN. I rather innocently said something about UN bureaucrats being international gangsters and confidence men. Naturally she became apoplectic. Loved it.

[Rick Ballard]

Those who disparaged the SPD response in this matter should weigh the position of the narrative had it not released the 911 calls and the responding officers reports. I'm not sure whether the intake compound video was "leaked" purposely but I have suspicions. BTW - the intake officer's examination of Zimmerman's head wound is consonant with protocols involving fresh blood and HIV transmission.

Where would the narrative be had Crump and the other race baiters not been countered?

I don't ascribe the outcome to luck - the SPD response is going to be studied very carefully by other PD's with a view towards developing their own response templates.

[narciso]

Our local drivetime radio host, who replaced
a slightly less RINO one, was all too credulous of Crump and co's claims;

http://nation.foxnews.com/george-zimmerman/2012/04/10/zimmerman-speaks-first-time

[Porchlight]

One of the most despicable arguments I've heard lately -- and I think Taranto repeated it -- is that "Zimmerman doesn't have a suit against NBC because he's a public figure".

Yes, Taranto did repeat it, yesterday IIRC. I was surprised.

[Jim Ryan]

Geez, Ext, I clicked on that link expecting parody. Wow. Speechless.

How come I don't have a right to anyone's money?

[Ignatz]

Isn't there some question whether the act of the homicide is what made Zimmerman a public figure?

This wiki link discusses someone in Zimmerman's shoes.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

If he's got a better grip on reality than the "liberal" media, it should be easy to overtake them in popularity, shouldn't it?

That should be past tense, BB. Fox News is eating the other networks' lunches, Daily Caller and PJ Media are quite widely read, and as we're seeing with this story, the big nets are apying close attention to the little guys.

[Dave (in MA)]

The first step in saving America is to purge the MSM of all of these lying bastards.

Via Instapundit, a link about one time when Peter Jennings put saving American lives ahead of journalism in a hypothetical scenario, and then Mike Wallace convinced him that he was wrong.

[DebinNC]

Clear example of the msm's repeat-but-don't-check methodology.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

(maybe it's time to leave this group)

Promise?

[narciso]

Well, this is unexpexcted;

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/04/10/huckabee-show-opens-with-stage/

[fdcol63]

Dave, I remember that incident with Wallace and Jennings when it happened. And I've been reminding people of it lately as I hear them laud Wallace upon his death.

[Sue]

narciso,

LOL. Unexpected like MSM's unexpected? He's a punk. A shyster. A Huckster.

[JamesH]

Tom, you refer a couple times in your post to Les Paul which should of course be Les Jones. Keep digging on the media coverage, it's been shameless.

[Jim Ryan]

Tom, you refer a couple times in your post to Les Paul which should of course be Les Jones. Keep digging...shameless.

Tee hee.

[Captain Hate]

And I've been reminding people of it lately as I hear them laud Wallace upon his death.

Belated congratulations to everybody who had Mike Wallace in their dead pool.

[Extraneus]

Ace:

NBC Lies; Claims "Mistake" In Zimmerman 911 Editing Due To Constraints Imposed By Fast-Paced, Information Dense 3 Hour Long Today Show Gabfest

That's enough of a lie right there. The Today show is not a 22 minute nightly broadcast. It's a 3 hour waste of viewers time in which wasting time is [a] feature, not a bug.

That's like me saying that I completely mistated the plot of a movie in an 1800 word review because I just didn't have the pixels to spare.

[Jane (where is Jon Corzine?)]

TM,

Your email doesn't work - so ...

Can I get you to come on the radio this weekend and talk about this case? There is a clamoring for you. I have, of course, held myself out as an insider at JOM.

Email me at fwdaj@live.com. WE can do it by phone (Sat AM) and I promise it will be painless.

[narciso]

You know who else was in the tete a tete, with
Jennings and Wallace, 'our good friend' Charles Ogletree, Oh, doing my Iran/Iraq duty,
last week was agonizing, but it was for a good cause, against the Kraken, I mean Couric.

[Tom Maguire]

Tom, you refer a couple times in your post to Les Paul which should of course be Les Jones.

I'm appalled. Truly - I can't figure out where this brainlock is coming from (Ru Paul?) but I have been getting that wrong for two days.

TM,

Your email doesn't work - so ...

I am going to put up a new address.

I promise it will be painless

But will it be fun? My lunatic ravings on a Saturday morning? Probably has to be. But I think I am driving off to a college revisit. I'll email you.

[Threadkiller]

If only Justia's editing of law received the same attention.

[Melinda Romanoff]

TK-

Or the MERS theft that's coming.

[Tom Bowler]

Jane,

Are you on WCRN this Saturday? I will definitely tune in.

[Thomas Collins]

"college revisit"

Brings back memories. My last college road trip was with my youngest. It was just she and I as we traipsed through Ohio, Illinois and Pennsylvania visiting schools. We did fine until going back home and stopping in Pennsylvania. I chose the Motel 6 because it was cheapest, she complained about no wireless. I said fine, we're staying in the Motel Six and if you need wireless, you can camp out in the main lobby where there was wireless. After regaling me with her arguments of how unreasonable I was, she removed herself to the main lobby for a few hours and satisfied her online Facebooking needs. Ah, the great college road trips. Bringing families together. :-))

[matt]

"Obama's visit to Palm Beach County today is his first as chief executive. He will be raising campaign cash in Palm Beach Gardens and calling for higher taxes on the wealthy in Boca Raton before heading to more fundraisers in Hollywood and Golden Beach.

The presidential visit is expected to cause some traffic snarls as Obama moves about the county.

From Palm Beach Gardens, The president will travel to the Boca Raton campus of Florida Atlantic University for what is billed as a non-campaign event on the economy. Obama is expected to promote the "Buffett Rule," a call for those making $1 million or more per year to pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes."

So he's calling for tax increases on the rich while sucking up millions from them. Let them eat pizza, I say!

[pagar]

Or the Vatican on our State Dept fraud list while the Child porn thugs in the MB Egyptian envoy get free passes thru customs while headed to the WH.

http://www.investigativeproject.org/3525/ipt-exclusive-state-department-barred-inspection#.T4NYOuAmxgg.twitter

[Bruce]

One of the most despicable arguments I've heard lately -- and I think Taranto repeated it -- is that "Zimmerman doesn't have a suit against NBC because he's a public figure". Except that he's a "public figure" because of their libel; if they had not created/propagated the lies, he'd be at home, not a target for lynch mobs.

This is part of the issue, isn't it? Can the media make someone a public figure by defaming them, and then claim that as a defense in a defamation suit? Not sure if I know the answer.

In the case of public figures, the standard is Actual malice. This doesn't include just intentional deception, but also a reckless disregard for the truth. Mere negligence though would not suffice.

Where a lot of MSM (including WSJ here) pundits may be sliding around, is that there is a distinct possibility that the editing was intentional, which would bring it within actual malice.

As someone has pointed out at JOM, the editing was more than just snipping out parts of the middle. Rather, work had to have been done to fade from one segment to another, so that the editing was not too blatant.

I do think that if I were an attorney involved in the litigation, I would much prefer being on the Zimmerman side, than NBC's side. You could show the before and after, the steps involved in "cropping" the tape, and all the bias in the news stories that NBC/MSNBC ran. Oh, and in all my announcements, I would emphasize that it is "Comcast's NBC and MSNBC units". Just what Comcast doesn't want - all their cable customers thinking about dropping them for satellite because of their biased race based reporting.

Back to the Actual Malice standard - this is why NBC is pushing the mere accident (i.e. "negligence") meme right now. If it were mere negligence, they are half way there keeping the defamation suit out of court - the other half being whether or not Zimmerman was a public figure, thanks to the same organizations claiming him such being the ones who made him such.

[Bruce]

Let me add to my last post - that NBC's excuse that the mistakes were a result of a tight production time constraints somewhat falls apart, when the same doctored 911 tape was run days later.

[Threadkiller]

Selective editing.

http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/09/arpaio-applauds-birther-congressmen-calls-for-legislative-action/

No mention of the selective service card.

[PacRim Jim]

60 Minutes will investigate NBC's actions, no doubt.
CBS wouldn't protect NBC would it? Say it ain't so.

[rse]

I still think he should contact richard jewell's attorney from the Olympic bombing misidentity case.

I see i caught babu's attention with a direct attack on the media and he or she thinks I should try to break into writing and the media world myself or shut up with criticisms.

OK.

[Porchlight]

I still think he should contact richard jewell's attorney from the Olympic bombing misidentity case.

Not sure about that. According to Wiki, Lin Wood went on to represent JonBenet's parents, Gary Condit, the alleged victim in the Kobe Bryant case, Anna Nicole Smith's mother, and most recently Herman Cain. I think his celebrity lawyer status might inflame the "media circus" aspect of the case too much. Maybe someone a little less well known would be better.

[Threadkiller]

Despite Ginsburg's pleas for Egypt to not follow the US Constitution ( http://m.newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2012/02/04/ruth-bader-ginsburg-egyptians-i-would-not-look-us-constitution-ap-nyt-ig) it looks like they did.

http://cdrkerchner.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/libertarian-republican-egypt-disqualifies-a-candidate-for-not-being-natural-born-citizen/

"As I read the initial report, the Egyptian candidate had a foreigner for a mother, i.e., a U.S. Citizen, thus he is not a “natural born Citizen” of Egypt and is being disqualified. Note the writer of the article starts out by saying that the issue is that the one parent is “foreign born”. It is not the foreign born status that is the dis-qualifier for one being a “natural born Citizen”, whether for the person in Egypt or for Obama in the USA. A dis-qualifier for natural born Citizen is that the one parent was not a Citizen (born or naturalized) of the respective country when their child was born in that country. To be a “natural born Citizen” of a country one must be born in the country to parents who are both Citizens (born or naturalized) of the country. While it is not entirely clear yet as to the facts in this story out of Egypt, for the case in Egypt the mother is alleged to be a U.S. Citizen. In the case of Obama, his father was a British Subject and Kenyan foreign national."

Come on Egypt! Give multiculturalism a chance. (look what it has done for us)

[caro]

Drip. Drip. Drip.

A new angle on the BC forgery at American Thinker. The article is linked as a Must Read by Lucianne.

[Jane (where is Jon Corzine?)]

Are you on WCRN this Saturday?

yup!

[Porchlight]

caro,

Thanks for linking that BC article. It's a special must-read for those who followed the TANG memo scandal (hint: "monospace").

[Threadkiller]

Caro's link is remarkably on topic.

" For my test I did not use the digital version released by the White House; instead, I used a picture of the actual paper document that Obama claims is a certified copy of his birth certificate. This photo was taken by NBC News reporter Savannah Guthrie, the only reporter from the pool of White House reporters allowed to touch and photograph the paper document, and which she later released to the public."

Honest NBC to the rescue.

[Jane (where is Jon Corzine?)]

Wow, someone needs to take her testimony. Then again she is probably not smart enough to know what she saw.

[Captain Hate]

Jane, when and where can I listen to your show online?

[Danube of Thought]

"And if there was nothing suspicious about Martin, why the call?"

Zimmerman does not have to justify the call. The state has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Martin did not take the first unlawful act.

(Lots of fun for bubu beginning at 11:34 a.m. on the "No Grand Jury" thread.)

[Jane (where is Jon Corzine?)]

Capn,

I'll post a link before Sat. I'm actually a guest on someone else's show (DaTech guy). Tom Bowler's on his show a lot.

[Jane (where is Jon Corzine?)]

Looks like Santorum is dropping out.

[Captain Hate]

Thanks Jane. I was just at the WESO website; what a trainwreck that web design is.

[DamnCat]

CORRECTION PLEASE!
"Lest you doubt, Jeralyn Merritt and Les Paul have some links and contemporaneous accounts of this reality."

Should be Les Jones - please do not drag the the late, great Les Paul into this sordid affair.

[Manuel Transmission]

Isn't NBC's defense like the Menendez brothers': the court should show mercy, because the brothers were recently orphaned?

[Melinda Romanoff]

Heh, MT.

[jimmyk]

"Isn't there some question whether the act of the homicide is what made Zimmerman a public figure?"

I wouldn't think so. There are something like 15,000 homicides a year, and unless either the perp or vic is already a public figure, it's page 12 news. The race-baiting MSM did this.

And if media libel makes one a public figure, then the term becomes meaningless. The fact that it's an exception has to mean that it's possible not to be considered a public figure.

[caro]

Thanks,Porch and TK. I guess we are the only ones interested. I am not going all "birther" on this, just convinced the BC posted on the .gov site is forged and wondering why it was necessary. What is he hiding?

[mbabbitt]

Remember, the Left wants to boycott Rush Limbaugh (and push him off the air) for using nasty language against a single, young woman. These news networks manipulated information to fuel a national race relations war. The Left and their no/double standards. This is one more reason why I left the Left.

[MJW]

Since the subject of spacing on Obama's BC has come up again, I'll mention some analysis I did quite a while ago. The pictures are here. I added colored stripes to show how the characters aligned. What I believe it shows is that, contrary to the American Thinker article, all characters are the same width. There is, however, a rather strange anomaly, for which I have no explanation: at about 3/4 of the way across the page there's a shift. All the characters right of that point seem to be shifted about half a character rightward, relative to the characters left of that point. The shift is between the 4 and the comma in "August 4, 1961." The extra spacing between those two characters is obvious. What's surprising is that the other characters above and below appear to have the same alignment.

[Marty]

NBC says they fired the perp--do you believe them? Why would you?

Liars lie, it's what they do and who they are. We've clearly established what they are, no reason to believe another word or image from their lying mouths or cameras.

[Richard]

Immelt is to Obama as Heast was to McKinely
So, Black Journalism is to Yellow Journalism

[NBChater]

O_O "We got caught...DELETE FUCK1NG EVERYTHING!!!"

[Cecil Turner]

And if media libel makes one a public figure, then the term becomes meaningless.

Well, according to one of the wiki sources, that's exactly how it works:

The concept of the "public figure" is broader than celebrities and politicians. A person can become an "involuntary public figure" as the result of publicity, even though that person did not want or invite the public attention. For example, people accused of high profile crimes may be unable to pursue actions for defamation even after their innocence is established, on the basis that the notoriety associated with the case and the accusations against them turned them into involuntary public figures. [emphasis added]

Seems unfair, but I can see the point: like it or not, Zimmerman is news.