A third person involved with a misleadingly edited recording of George Zimmerman’s 911 call to police in the Trayvon Martin case is no longer employed by NBC News. TV Newser reported today that Luciano was dismissed after an investigation that also led to the firing of a still-unidentified Miami-based NBC News producer. In a segment for the Today show on March 22, the New York Times reported today, Lilia Luciano used the misleadingly edited version of Zimmerman’s 911 call that had been broadcast previously on Miami NBC affiliate WTVJ. In a cascading repetition, yet another correspondent, Ron Allen, used the misleading audio in another story a few days later. Luciano is the third journalist to have lost their job over this story. WJTV reporter Jeff Burnside was also fired for his role in broadcasting the misleading audio. WTVJ said when Burnside was fired last week that its edited audio was a separate incident from the Today report on the NBC network.
Related:
Miami TV Reporter Fired For Separate But Similar Edit Of 911 Call
NBC Fires Producer For Misleading Edit Of Zimmerman’s 911 Call
Again, no accountability like this at FOX news.
That’s because Fox News wouldn’t have edited the piece in the first place.
Oh yeah – Fox News is a pillar of honest, impartial reporting. They never edit or intentionally misquote anything. Well, except for the ACORN tapes. And the Sherrod tape. And James Hoffa’s speech. And more examples of Obama’s speeches than can be listed in the space allotted. Yeah, they’re really honest. Get real. try thinking for yourself, not just what the puppets on Fox tell you to think.
No. They would just ask a question as if it were an answer using values-laden language:
“Did this brave man save his neighborhood from a hooded thug?”
“Why is a good American protecting his neighborhood from a hooded intruder being accused of murder?”
“Is George Zimmerman a hero for murdering the intruder wearing gang apparel who invaded his suburban neighborhood?”
Yeah, that seems more Fox News.
‘Accountability’? Fox News did not deliberately edit a tape to mischaracterize the contents of a phone call in order to make the audience believe something that was not true. NBC did it, and did nothing about it until other news organizations turned up the transcription. They deliberately put out a lie in order to support a certain narrative? Why? What vested interest did they have in that narrative over the truth? Commentators can spin however they want but when you are delivering hard news, the truth is what matters, not how you feel about the truth. So 3 are fired now? Is it going to stop at 3 or does it go deeper?
Why are they firing anyone?? Didn’t NBC state that this was an honest mistake just a few weeks ago? How can you not take responsibility then start firing people? Sounds to me like the employees being fired have a nice lawsuit against NBC.
How is it an “honest mistake” to cut and splice an audio tape into something it wasn’t when the cutting and splicing started?
Let’s review:
Lilia Luciano, a Miami-based correspondent, “is no longer working for the network,
In a story for the “Today” show on March 20, Luciano used part of the George Zimmerman 911 call in which an entire phrase 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.
But here’s how the call really went:
Zimmerman: 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.
Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he white, black, or Hispanic?
Zimmerman: He looks black.
NOT an accident. That is an agenda-driven manipulation of facts
This is a far bigger and wider reaching story than the shooting itself. It is difficult to exaggerate how offensive this is. This isn’t having a different take or slant on the news. This is manipulating facts to give the opposite meaning of what they were. This is simply lying. Actively. Going out of their way to lie to their viewers. This can and should change people’s perspective of the news.
I have no idea why people are not more up in arms about it. Either NBC has done wonders in minimizing the damage or the most influential people in media don’t really care so much and are sympathetic to the result if not necessarily the tactic.
Agreed. No less than 3 people had to actively be involved in deciding to alter the audio and that raises 3 possibilities: The organization had decided to do it, all the journalists involved were engaged in bias or none of the journalist involved saw the problem because they were hired for reasons other than their journalistic abilities.
Having worked in Miami I actually lean toward the third possibility.
Fran, I’m baffled too. What we saw last month was a major news organization deliberately distorting the facts in order to create a false and potentially inflammatory impression, and the public is treating it like a firecracker went off. But it wasn’t a firecracker. It was a nuclear bomb.
Fox News (a major news organization) deliberately distorts facts in order to create false and inflammatory impressions all of the time.
NBC is hardly the first organization to do so.
NEITHER organization is right. This is just one of the first times that people are up in arms about it.
Faux News,
Why are you trying to make this a partisan thing? Why are you trying to minimize it?
Again, this isn’t about bias, or a political slant. This is about actively changing evidence and using that corrupted evidence to establish a lie. This is a news organization we’re talking about!
Please give me an example of Fox or any other network (other than CBS, which was also guilty of such a thing) doing something remotely similar.
Don’t look at this from the goggles of “whose side are the culprits on? Are they on my side?” Just look at the facts. Just the facts. And tell me that the violation of public trust does not offend you to the core.