NBC Producer Fired Over Zimmerman Call
Associated Press, April 9, 2012 6:15 AM EDT
NEW YORK (AP) -- NBC News has fired a producer for editing a recording of George Zimmerman's call to police the night he shot Trayvon Martin, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.
The person was not authorized to talk about the situation publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The identity of the producer was not disclosed.
An NBC spokeswoman declined to comment.
The producer's dismissal followed an internal investigation that led to NBC apologizing for having aired the misleading audio.
To repeat what many said on the first post about this, NBC's reputation suffered from such a blatantly manipulated clip that contributed to a national discussion. And I think everyone in this class is too close to journalism to not realize such slants really don't happen "by accident." Thus this firing is entirely warranted.
ReplyDeleteThe producer likely would argue that he or she is a victim of getting the scoop and our incessant news cycle. But the point is the editing reflected an opinion of the story, going against the news reporter's role. Impartiality probably doesn't even exist, but journalists need to make it look like it does by not knowingly mislead the readers. Hopefully this firing will serve as a reminder of that.