NY Times Caught Using Well-Known Deceptively Edited Portion of George Zimmerman 911 Call
An NBC News editor and reporter were fired in 2012 for doing the same thing the New York Times just did in a ten-year anniversary opinion piece on the shooting death of Trayvon Martin: Editing Zimmerman’s 911 to make it sound like he brought up Martin’s race.
If you’re feeling as though you’ve been transported back in time to ten years ago after reading that headline, no worries. I assure you we’re in the present day. But unfortunately, the mainstream media is still up to their same old tricks on matters of race, deceptively framing stories in ways that they think bolster their false narrative.
You may recall that a decade ago, an intense nationwide debate revolving around race, profiling, self-defense, and stand your ground laws was beginning in the aftermath of the February 26, 2012 shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was black, at the hands of George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old Hispanic man.
Zimmerman was a neighborhood watch volunteer in the Sanford, Florida community he lived in and had initially called 911 from his SUV to report Martin as “a suspicious person” shortly before the fatal shooting took place.
Zimmerman was questioned by the Sanford PD but initially wasn’t charged because they said didn’t have any evidence contradicting his claim of self-defense. It was that decision along with increased coverage from local and national media outlets alike, as well as then-President Barack Obama’s insertion of himself into the case that sparked outrage and the national conversation that ensued.
A full month into the case, NBC’s “TODAY Show” aired a segment that included a deceptively edited clip of Zimmerman’s 911 call. It was edited in a way that made it sound like Zimmerman was the one who brought up Martin’s race. Here’s the actual transcript of that portion of the call:
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.
911 Operator: Okay, is this guy, is he white, black, or Hispanic?
Zimmerman: He looks black.
In the “TODAY Show” version, the 911 operator’s question about Martin’s race was completely edited out. A “news” report on the MSNBC website did the same thing, but was quietly changed after conservative websites like Newsbusters raised the issue.
After an internal investigation was launched into the matter, NBC News fired the producer behind the segment a couple of weeks later and not long after that a reporter for their Miami affiliate who also edited the call in the same way.
After he was found “not guilty” in his trial, Zimmerman went on to sue NBC News for libel, but the case was dismissed by the same judge who presided over his murder trial.
Here we are ten years later, and the New York Times has done the exact same thing NBC News did in their infamous segment.
Liberal columnist Charles Blow sat down with Obama, Rev. Al Sharpton, and civil rights activist Henry Louis Gates Jr. to discuss the anniversary of Martin’s death and how it was, in their view, the catalyst for the rebirth of the modern-day civil rights movement. Blow wrote an opinion piece on the interviews, and included with the piece was a nearly 7-minute video clip.
At the :43 mark of the video, you begin to hear parts of Zimmerman’s 911 call. A the :55 spot, you hear the exact same edit that NBC News did in their piece. It’s made to sound as though Zimmerman initiated the racial component into the call:
"My first response to Trayvon Martin's death was as a parent, the thing we fear most," said President @BarackObama.
"Then, when you found out the circumstances, I responded specifically as a Black parent and as a Black man." https://t.co/JneZflCk8k pic.twitter.com/NRNkrt8fLf
— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) February 26, 2022
As it was the last time around, it was conservative websites that caught it, including Hot Air and Newsbusters.
The Times Opinion section was so proud of the story that they pinned it to the top of their Twitter page for a time:
So, not only has @nytopinion @nytimes ignored tags, replies & DMs to get them to engage in actual journalism and retract the egregious lie in the Zimmerman/Martin piece, they have now made it their pinned tweet. https://t.co/vHctWl8ef6 pic.twitter.com/zSyTFu8SPp
— Super Journalist (Ret) – JOURN-AL of Skrypton (@Magnum_CK) March 1, 2022
As of this writing, the Times’ video is still up on the website, on Twitter, and on YouTube.
Though the Times hasn’t publicly commented on the criticism that they deliberately edited or used the well-known deliberately edited clip clip to bolster their unfounded opinion that Zimmerman was racially profiling Martin, NBC News has maintained that the edit to that TODAY Show report was a mistake. But Bearing Arms did a video shortly after NBC News fired their producer that showed how there’s no way the edit could have merely been a “mistake”:
The New York Times’ edit or use of it wasn’t a mistake, either. It was deliberate, just as it was deliberate when the Times referred to Zimmerman as a “white Hispanic” in some of their reports.
As was the case when this happened in 2012, heads should roll at the “newspaper of record,” but they won’t, because despite their routine claims of wanting to see this nation unify and heal from its racial wounds, news outlets like the New York Times feed off of racial strife and work hard to fan the flames of racism, because it gives their increasingly “woke” newsrooms the opportunity to virtue signal about how supposedly committed they are to racial justice.
And yet they still wonder why so few people trust them. Go figure.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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Comments
Funny how the Kool-Aid crowd never bothers to do the homework.
They did they are propagandaist liars who are aware they have a near monopoly on distribution of information (courtesy of 20 years of having corporate simps who follow Ayn Rand instead of George Washington as a Republican Party).
True. Same with the Washington Compost.
We’re just a tab bit above openly fascist regiemes like Russia and China. It’s just a ‘flu’ away.
Or a ‘war’.
Or a ‘voting machine’.
Don’t let them off the hook.
They’re not IGNORANT. They’re malicious liars.
The truth is that Thugvon Martin’s pride and joy were his fists, and that when he assaulted George Zimmerman he did receive lawful justice. Thugvon was a product of both terrible parents and a shit culture. We will have to hurt black feelings to fix this.
This was not the start of a new civil rights movement, it is b lack racism on every other race. It is a grand con to extract money and concessions from all of society.
Our response to this should be to kill all Affirmative handouts.
We should look for bright people, regardless of race, and give merited hand up aid as long as they continue to merit such.
Those who cannot make the grade should take jobs appropriate for their skills, as in collecting garbage, sorting recyclable materials, mucking out horse stalls, etc.
Never forget the thug’s ‘baby’ pictures!
That’s very important. To this day, whenever they show Trayvon, they show his little kid picture. A lot of people don’t realize Trayvon was bigger than Zimmerman.
The photos the democrat media profilerated:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/are-old-photos-trayvon-martin-george-zimmerman-deceptive-flna613827
The real photos of Martin and his thug life:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/trayvon-martin-cell-phone-photos-show-weed-guns-and-horsebac
Martin was a punk ass bitch who got what he asked for, for the first time in his life.
In order for the most entrenched leftist ideologues to maintain their ideological agenda, they must pretend not to know things, its as simple as that.
Ah The NY Times…Pravda on the Hudson as usual.
Once a newsroom has false source material that bolsters their left narrative, they will never, ever, ever discard it. They will continue to misuse it forever.
Not forever, just until they go out of business.
They’re not going anywhere. They’re supported by the democrat party, and ultimately by democrat corruption within our government.
https://www.liveaction.org/news/npr-media-slandering-pro-lifers-funded-abortion-soros/
I’d expect nothing less from the New York Slimes.
I am shocked to discover that the NYT would run a story with provably false statements. /S
Izvestia on the Hudson doing what it does best: Printing all the news that fits its views. There is no truth in Izvestia.
The NY Times is more accurately the Jewish liberal’s Old Testament and New Testament combined. It’s sickening, and it’s leading to war. Again.
What on earth have Jews got to do with this story? Nobody involved was Jewish.
It used to be: “Printing all the news that’s fit to print.”
Now it’s: “Printing all the news that fits its views.”
“Every page is an opinion page.”
Whenever reporting a crime, you should not mention the person’s race. If the dispatch asks, like they asked Zimmerman, say “I don’t know.”
Otherwise, the media will try to make you look like a raging KKK racist.
The photos the democrat media profilerated:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/are-old-photos-trayvon-martin-george-zimmerman-deceptive-flna613827
The real photos of Martin and his thug life:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/trayvon-martin-cell-phone-photos-show-weed-guns-and-horsebac
Didn’t the Palin lawsuit just recently get dismissed on the basis that media calumnists enjoy benefit of clergy, and are not subject to civil law?
No. It was dismissed because when a public figure sues for defamation she must prove that the writer knew what they were writing was not true, or else that they had no reason to think it was true, but didn’t care. It’s got nothing to do with “media”.
But points for using “benefit of clergy” correctly.
The biggest lie is how the news reports all still say that Trayvon Martin was shot on his way home from 7-11.
The most important piece of information to come out at the trial was from the friend Martin had been on the phone with leading up to the fatal confrontation. She testified that after initially running away from Zimmerman, Martin had told her was back at his stepfather’s house.
From there he would have had to gone back out about a hundred yards towards where he had first seen Zimmerman in order to reach the point where the fatal confrontation occurred.
That convinced the jury that Martin was the aggressor, as Zimmerman testified.
And it gives the lie to the standard claim that Martin was walking home when he was shot. No, he had gone out FROM home, almost certainly on the hunt for Zimmerman.
I don’t know that that’s the biggest lie, some of the other ones seem bigger than that. But it’s definitely a significant lie.
Where is George Zimmerman’s statue?
Zimmerman’s big mistake was in choosing to go by his English first name and his father’s surname, like most people do. Had he used the name Jorge Mesa, as he could easily have done, none of us would ever have heard of him, or of his late assailant.
The same might still have been true had Al Sharpton not hailed from the relatively small area in the USA where anyone with a German surname is likely to be Jewish. That’s the case in the Bos-Wash corridor, Southern Florida, and perhaps also California. In the Midwest, on the other hand, a German surname much more likely means the person is of German ancestry. Which is in fact the case with Zimmerman’s father, and had Sharpton been from there he’d have correctly assumed so and not turned it into a cause celebre. But he’s a New Yorker, so as soon as he heard “George Zimmerman” he thought “A Jew” and started a crusade against him. When he found out the truth it was too late to stop, so he continued.
That’s why I always call Martin “Little Saint Trayvon”, after “Little Saint Hugh” in whose name (and those of his successors) so many thousands of Jews were slaughtered.
I would not trust the NYT if they reported that the sun rose in the east and set in the west.
Of course not. On the other hand, their reporting it wouldn’t automatically make it false.