#Trayvon: Third NBC employee fired for doctoring 911 tapes
**Posted by Phineas
Via PJMedia’s “The Tatler” blog, yet more evidence of the corruption of the mainstream media:
TV Newser reports that a third NBC employee has been fired for dishonestly editing George Zimmerman’s 911 call. The fired employee’s name is Lilia Luciano. The edit that she created is, if anything, even more deceptive than the NBC edit that stirred racial angles in the story of Trayvon Martin’s fatal shooting, and which has resulted in the firing of two other NBC employees.
“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.”But here is how Zimmerman’s conversation with the 911 dispatcher actually 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.”Luciano’s firing makes three employees fired for dishonest edits in this story at NBC; Lilia Luciano, who joined NBC from Univision 18 months ago; Jeff Burnside, the reporter and environmental activist at NBC’s Miami owned-and-operated affiliate; and another producer at NBC whom the network has not named. Their edits consistently played up race as the driving motive in George Zimmerman’s actions.
This looks like what’s called “noble cause corruption.” Assuming these “journalists” weren’t just out to gin up the most shocking story they could to boost their network’s ratings and their own careers, then it’s reasonable to speculate that they committed these crimes against ethics and trashed their own integrity because they felt they were serving a higher purpose — perhaps “fighting racism” or “the Right-wing,” or pursuing some vague, ego-stroking sense of “justice.”
Whatever.
What these fools really accomplished, however, was to do harm on two levels: first, they further degraded the already terrible reputation of the major news networks — why should anyone have a shred of trust in NBC’s news offerings after this, if they still did?
Even more important, however, is the harm done to the judicial process by these agenda-journalists. Both Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, victim and accused, deserve justice: a fair hearing, an impartial jury, and, if need be, punishment for one and justice for the other. But how is that supposed to happen when NBC and other MSM outlets spread fantasies that can only have the effect of winding up the mob?
I’m not a fan of Sean Hannity, but he was spot on in 2008 when he said that journalism was dead. And the exposure of Ms. Luciano’s misdeeds is yet another baring of its rotted face.
(Crossposted at Public Secrets)