"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
m...
In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:

"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message news:mbGdnR4zJ-
"Robert Green" wrote:

Edited for time. Done every day by NBC, Fox and dozens of others.
He
didn't say "he's wearing a hoodie, he's 6' tall." He said what he
said.
Let's see how far Zimmerman's lawsuit against NBC goes for
accurately
reporting what he said. I'd guess nowhere but stranger things have
happened. Take OJ's acquittal, for instance.

Yeah, it would take so much more time to include the part about the
cops
asking the question.

WTF would adding that question change??

Context is everything. People are using the out of context statement
to indicate that it was racial profiling.

People are stupid. And this is news to you? I expect others to argue the
'stupid' point of view but with your J-degree I assume you knew these
charges of altered context have no legal footing and very little merit.

Now if you want to talk about out of context video, let's talk the Rodney
King beating. If anything ever appeared "out of context" it was the video
that showed King getting beaten, but not the hyper-violent behavior that
made police (rightly) believe that he was on PCP or some other drug. Did
the media edit it that way? No, Holliday turned on his video camera AFTER
the part where King was resisting so there WAS no video showing the entire
context. We all know how that turned out.

Now in that case, even watching the whole, unedited video makes it seems as
if poor innocent drunken, endanger-the-life-of-many speeder Rodney was
getting a beat down for nothing.

The NBC elision of the dispatcher's question doesn't make Zimmerman sound
like a racist to me, nor should it to anyone else. What's left is a guy
describing the suspect in the most basic of terms. I would have said, black
male, approximately 18 years of age, 150 pounds, wearing a blue or black
hoodie. But I was a police reporter for 10 years listening to100's of hours
of police radio traffic so I am conditioned to ID people that way. Never
attributed to malice what can be explained more easily by time pressure.

The first and only time race
was mentioned was in direct response to a question about it.
You don't think that is an important part of the picture?

No, I don't. There's where we differ significantly. I've sat in front of
an Ampex 3/4" video editing console counting frames, trying to get a
complicated story that might run 2500 words in a newspaper down to three
minutes or less. I *know* what it's like to have a deadline looming over
you, having to get tapes from maybe 20 different sources editing down to one
broadcast quality master and to have all the salient points covered. We'll
get the final read on this when Zimmerman's civil suit goes to trial. You
must know *something* about the burden of proof he faces in a
defamation/libel suit and that his likelihood of prevailing is very, very
slim. NBC might settle just to avoid the cost of litigation, but I doubt it
because it sets a bad precedent.

Things are edited for so much more than time.

As I recall, you were involved with print media, a different animal than
what we are discussing now. I spent a summer interning at WABC news HQ
in
DC so I have some real experience in national TV news production. Line
producers are willing to throw down over an extra 10 secs on a 60 second
story on the evening news because they're competing with other stories
and
other producers for a very small slice of the evening broadcast. More
than
a three minute story is very, very rare and I doubt unless you've tried
to
edit down hours of footage into two minutes you realize what has to be
eliminated as "not moving the story forward." Nightly news editors
don't
just count every second, they count every single frame looking to fit as
much information is as possible.

So, you pick something else out if you don't have the extra 5
seconds. It is called editing and it is supposed to make sure that the
important stuff gets in and that enough information is given to (at
least in theory) the reader/viewer so that they know what is going. And
THAT, my friend is drilled into us in J-School no matter which media you
are studying. To leave something out that changes the context of what is
the most crucial part (or at least the part getting the most attention)
is not fulfilling the requirements of the job.

Jeez, could you please be a little more condescending? I've actually worked
TV news so I know what I am talking about here. The rush to get a piece to
the air is profound. On a big story there's probably more than one line
producer and perhaps two or three editors working at breakneck speed trying
to touch on all the facts that are flooding in - sometimes totally
uncorroborated, but that's another story - at breakneck speed.

I am certain, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the question of the dispatcher
was cut for time and time alone because the editors felt, as I do, that no
reasonable person would assume that calling a black man black is racist,
especially in the context of what kind of questions we KNOW a dispatcher
would be asking a caller tailing a suspect. It's just common sense and the
fact that many people lack it doesn't mean I'm going to cater to them.

Riding this issue is just about as lame as the hubbub that happened months
ago with the murdering abortion doctor. "Oh, people screamed, the
mainstream press is ignoring this story because they're liberals in the bag
for abortion." They somehow believe that every morning all the TV and print
editors have an on-line meeting about what stories they will suppress that
day.

It's preposterous and it couldn't be further from the truth. Even Fox
failed to pick it up because that's how it works. If one big network covers
something, they all do. If no one big picks it up, the others usually don't
either. They don't call it "pack" journalism for nothing.

What NBC did was trivial compared to how Breibart edited the *crucial*
part
of Sherrod's speech to make her look absolutely racist. We'll see who
prevails in Zimmerman's lawsuit. I seriously doubt GZ will because he
said
what he said, not that TM was 5'11", or wearing a hoodie or any other
descriptor. Had he uttered and they edited out other descriptive words
he
used to home in on "black" you might have a point, but they didn't. GZ
chose he words, no one else did. NBC didn't say "he's a racist" and to
*normal* people, they didn't imply it. These charges only seem to
resonate
with people who have an axe to grind for whatever reason.

Actually it was pretty much the same. They edited a crucial part of
the phone call to make it look like he was racist.

God, would you get over it? That didn't happen and only people with an
agenda of some kind think a dark liberal malice was at work. Read that
Salon piece about Fox if you want to talk real malice. This "made him look
racist" BS is a non-starter to intelligent people. Stupid people will
believe what they will no matter what the facts are so they don't much
concern me. You, however, should know better.

So in your view,
Sharpton, Jackson, et al, who are making the racist assertion aren't
normal (something we actually agree on..grin).

Absolutely. You know they played this for all it was worth and to inflame
the black community they had to find something that they could contort to
serve their purposes. I just find it odd that you are arguing their
meritless position. I believe the Breibart edit was very deliberate and the
NBC piece was very accidental. In terms of degree of malice, there's no
comparison.

He won't win largely because NYT vs Sullivan gives media a get out
of jail free card.

Yeah, well, at least I beat that admission out of you, Rodney. (-: There's
no THERE there, and this is a triviality blown up out of proportion to
because Sharpton and others needed a racial hook to raise the hue and cry.
It won't stand up in court where a jury will hear how TV news is produced in
detail from defense attorneys.

Now if the Justice Department wants to pursue civil rights charges, they
could possibly make a case if they had tapes of every call GZ made to police
and nine out of ten suspects he reported were black. But the jury didn't buy
the racial profiling angle based on the "he's black" comment and neither do
I.

Given how much other ground they had to cover in the telecast, it's
completely in line with standard editing practices. It didn't make him
look
racist when he wasn't, it accurately portrayed what Zimmerman thought
was
the most important factor about his quarry. That he was black.

If he thought it was most important why did he not make the
assertion from the get and only mentioned race when specifically asked.

I think he called Martin an asshole that always got away first. The
dispatcher probably correctly surmised that looking for an asshole might not
be as useful a description to the police so she asked for clarification.
That's just standard police procedure.

--
Bobby G.