NBC News has taken a page out of the Team Nixon playbook in response to the heat it has taken for broadcasting a deliberately truncated audio of a 911 tape in the Trayvon Martin case. The editing in question was obviously intended to make it appear that George Zimmerman was racially profiling Martin on the night that Zimmerman shot him. Hollywood Reporter has Ehrlichman's NBC's statement:
"During our investigation it became evident that there was an error made in the production process that we deeply regret," NBC News said in a statement e-mailed to The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday. "We will be taking the necessary steps to prevent this from happening in the future and apologize to our viewers."
When asked if anyone at Today had lost their job or had been reassigned as a result of the investigation, an NBC spokeswoman said: "We will not be commenting on our course of action."
The apology is fine but the rest of it is PR pap that is designed to hopefully make the issue go away for NBC. "Sorry about that. Nothing else to see here, though. Please move along."
If this was a simple case of a reporter or producer making an error, then this a terrible way to handle it. Not naming names now only broadens the list of possible suspects, and their work product, that the public can and will feel entitled to be suspicious towards.
And this was also a blatant breach of trust. The best way for NBC to reestablish that trust with the public would be to take open and concrete actions toward that goal, not to thumb its nose and say "Now you can trust us."
On the other hand, we have to remember that the fish rots from the head down. If someone high up in the chain was responsible for distorting the coverage on this issue, for example, managing editor and Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, then the modified limited hangout becomes a far more preferable strategy than admitting that your news operation is rotten to the core. If that fails, we all know what comes next.
Hey, can somebody go down to 30 Rock and see if they're building a stone wall?
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