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



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.

Where exactly did I say anything about legal footing, and merit
has little to do with situation after NYT v. Sullivan and progeny. I
don't see how you can suggest stupidity is involved when pertinent facts
were left out by the editing process. If the question from the cops had
been there.

If it had been there, nothing would change except in the minds of people who
want to see racism. Perhaps it's because this issue has been dealt with
time and time again that I see no great harm in editing out the dispatcher's
comments as superfluous. To argue that it makes GZ look racist is the
attitude that many dim witted people took because they were *looking* for
malice. To me, on a rainy, dark night just about the only qualifier he
*could* have used was black because he was too far away to detect anything
else, or so I believe. He might have been able to see something like a
college/high school logo on the hoodie if there was one, but what other
things could he have said to describe him.

This reminds me of how people used to rail on me for the headlines on my
stories about them. Time and again, people who didn't know I had *nothing*
to do with writing the headline laced into me and I had to explain that a
copy editor read the story, dreamed up a headline that would fit in the
space the managing editor decided to allot to the story and lots of times
they didn't even get my byline right. I was Robert Brown, Bob Greene,
Robbie Green and many more.

Actually, my greater concern overall (especially with as you noted time
pressure) with everyone is that when the dumb statements were being
made, no one decided to run them with the real tape. Seems like balance
is only sometimes important (one of the reasons I left the biz).

I think the difference in our viewpoints is that even though it was only one
summer, I witnessed the absolute pandemonium that occurs in a national TV
news studio when a hot story breaks. There's a master chart of how the news
will go that night, and from there, it's simply chaos subdivided. There's
no other industry I know of quite so panic-stricken every night and so
loosely organized that it's shocking *anything* that goes out on the air is
correct.

A very unfortunate side effect of that nightly madhouse is that TV news
gathering now depends on getting opposing viewpoints from pundits and not
doing any analysis because thinking is what gets them in trouble. Taking
clips, for example, from the NRA heads and the Brady leadership take the
heat off the network for inserting any bias - they cover both sides fairly -
allegedly and they don't have to write copy that could be (and probably
would be) riddled with errors. The problem there is that they sometimes
present unworthy candidates to rebut what people in leadership positions are
saying, just to appear balanced.

I wish I could do a Vulcan mind-meld to transmit the absolute insanity of a
national TV newsroom on deadline. People run through the room shouting 10
minutes to air, 9 minutes to air, screaming they can find this tape or that
tape or there's something wrong with the timecoding or someone's segment is
20 seconds too long or too short.

I want to take an instant to remember Helen Thomas of UPI. She died last
week after being the dean of the Whitehouse Press corp for decades. She took
the time out to explain how the press conferences functioned and even ran
interference with the security folks who just loved to give interns and
newbies a hard time. She never flinched from asking the tough questions.

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.

That wasn't condescending. That was a statement of two facts. One,
editing is picking out the important stuff, why else do journalists and
editors exist? Heck the lack of editing is one of the worst parts of
many media outlets and most Internet sites any more.

Condescension, like racism, is in the eye of the beholder. Do you really
think I needed to know how editing works? (-: Journalists gather, editors
edit, TV news produces do a little bit of both. And it seems like you left
out the second fact. RACIST!!!!!! (-: It's so easy to screw up just
because people aren't perfect. So the Sharptons of the world saw racism in
GZ saying "he's black? So what? If it wasn't that statement, they would
have found some other minor point they could escalate into a reason to cry
racism. Yawn. NBC has the truth on its side and that's usually enough to
quash a nonsense racial bias/defamation suit. Of course, with a jury,
anything's possible.






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.

Actually I am not saying otherwise, but I am questioning the
decision making. We KNOW what a dispatcher is going to ask, but just
because the reporters do doesn't mean that all (or heck even most) are
privy to the ins and outs of police dispatcherdom. Again, my biggest
complaint is not using the tape to counteract some of the idiocy when it
came out.

And I don't disagree that using the full tape would have been better. But
producers and video editors are conditioned to shave time whenever they
think something's superfluous. You must have encountered one of those types
in the print world. Everyone's had an editor that ruthlessly cuts out words,
phrases and punction to "punch up the story" and doing so changed the
meaning of the story with over-editing. I certainly have and I wanted to
"punch *them* up."

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.

And that, somehow, makes it alright.

It is what it is and I don't see it changing any time soon, nor should it.
Do you really want a central authority dictating what news is to be covered?
The current system works pretty well and the proof is that even the abortion
doctor story came to light once *one* outlet covered it. Generating story
ideas takes a lot of creativity and when some paper or TV station locks onto
a great story, the last thing they want to do is share it with the
competition. That's what "scooping" is all about. Competition is healthy
both in business and the business of gathering the news.

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.

At what point did I ever say anything about liberal malice?

What is it then? As a professional you should know that this happens all
the time. Regrettably news stories aren't research papers with copious
citations and peer reviews. They are the best that a team of overworked
people can do in the very short time allotted and sometimes things "look"
bad to some people and sometimes things are broadcast that are 100% wrong.

I am saying from a professional standpoint it was blown and blown
repeatedly.

Sorry, I disagree. I think it's been blown up, and blown up repeatedly by
people like Sharpton who have an agenda and *want* to turn the sad tale of a
wannabe cop into a racial profiling incident. It should be clear to even a
bowl of Jello that GZ's isolated comment, even without the prompting of the
dispatcher, isn't enough to sustain a charge of racism, professionally,
morally, legally or ethically. Perhaps if they had strapped rocket motors
to Zimmerman's head I would agree with you, but we'll have to agree to
disagree on this one.

--
Bobby G.