Like Rathergate, Edit-Gate is a New Media-driven story pushed so hard (including here at the Bigs) that the mainstream media can no longer ignore it.
The result has been some action on the part of NBC News, but nowhere near enough. But hey, if NBC prefers death by a thousand paper cuts as opposed to biting the bullet and simply doing the right thing, that’s fine by me.
At first NBC News thought they could make us go away by admitting the “error.” The “error,” of course, being the malicious, race-baiting edit of 911 audio in order to make a private citizen, who is currently in hiding for fear of his life, look racist.
Then NBC News thought an apology might end the growing firestorm.
Then, finally, just like a White House with something to hide about Fast and Furious, news was leaked late Friday that NBC had finally fired the producer responsible for this unpardonable act.
The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple, who has been the mainstream media exception in doing a superb job of covering this scandal, put the news of last night’s firing this way:
Yet it’s not sewn up. We still don’t know the name of the dismissed producer; we don’t know if the network gave any consideration to apologizing directly to Zimmerman; we don’t know if warnings were issued to other NBC employees; and so on.
NBC could have headed off this story sprawl by publishing a fuller account of the incident ealier [sic] this week. Since it failed to do so, this scandal will have a life well beyond Easter.
Yes, that’s right, just for starters, NBC News refuses to name the fired producer responsible.
And that, by any reasonable standard, is nothing more than a cover up.
To think that this biased, irresponsible, race-baiter can now freely move about the cabin and get a job anywhere in the news business, free from public scrutiny, is a cover up.
Moreover, if NBC won’t name the producer, how in the world are we supposed to know someone has actually been fired?
But the biggest problem for NBC News is that a single unnamed sacrificial scapegoat doesn’t begin to pay for the deliberate crime of throwing gasoline on a racial fire that was already raging.
Edit-Gate didn’t occur in the fever swamps of MSNBC. This happened on the oh-so-storied “Today Show,” which means that there are only two ways this was allowed to happen:
Read the rest here.
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Even in today’s economic reality, I think someone at NBC knows what needs to be done editorially. The problem is one person with this skill needs to be on duty watching content production at all times. This is where I think it falls apart, because only one or two senior people may have the skills necessary.
Content is frequently not produced by the peer group of the audience. An upper demo target audience for news content might be surprised to learn that much of the time, it is edited and produced by people just as dumb as their own kids.
Regarding the jet crash in Vriginia Beach- I heard a radio reporter say “the pilots would be interviewed to find out why they ejected from the plane” uh…. well let me see, maybe the pilots felt that ejecting would be a better idea than dying.
They obviously foster and encourage this kind of behavior routinely. This was just one egregious example in which they were not only caught red-handed but publicly ridiculed for it (a rare combination because it’s usually just plain ignored) so now they want to make you believe that they have no agenda and all their news stories are reliable and wholesome, but this was “one bad apple” or “one bad incident” etc etc
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, this was a lone wolf gunman, and in the future we will not mislead you in any way because we have no agenda we are shoving down your throat.