MSNBC and NBC News--already famous for their perpetual bashing of conservatives and Republicans--are fast acquiring another claim to fame: dishonest editing of news footage to gin up the left-wing outrage machine.
The latest edit appeared on the Monday edition of the “Martin Bashir” program where the father of one of the victims of the Newton, Conn. school shooting was shown supposedly being shouted down by gun rights supporters as he testified before a hearing about banning certain types of guns in the state. Full video below the fold.
“A father’s grief, interrupted by the cries of a heckler,” a smug Bashir pronounced after running the clip. View program excerpt below:
In reality, however, no such interruption took place because the man, Neil Heslin, actually had invited people to challenge his question “Why anybody in this room needs to have one of these assault-style weapons or military weapons or high capacity clips?”
Several members of the audience responded to his inquiry. Unfortunately for the poor souls who tune in to MSNBC trying to find actual news, they never saw the question because Bashir cut it out.
Here is the full, unedited clip of the meeting, courtesy of our friends at Twitchy:
As of this writing, MSNBC has not issued a correction to inform that it had presented a false clip.
A transcript of the relevant portion of the “Martin Bashir” show:
NEIL HESLIN: Why anybody in this room needs to have done of these assault-style weapons or military weapons or high capacity clips?
[MSNBC cut]
AUDIENCE MEMBER: The Second Amendment shall not be infringed.
HESLIN: All right.
Unidentified Moderator: Please, please, no comments while Mr. Heslin is speaking. We’ll clear the room.
MARTIN BASHIR: A father’s grief, interrupted by the cries of a heckler. That was the scene today in Hartford, Connecticut where the parents of children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary testified before an audience that wasn’t always friendly.
The video below from CNSNews.com producer Bob Parks juxtaposes the original footage of the hearing with the deceptive MSNBC edit:
NBC and its cable arm MSNBC are no stranger to false editing of news footage. In March of last year, NewsBusters exposed both news operations for repeatedly presenting to viewers dishonestly edited audio clips of George Zimmerman which made him appear to be making racial statements against Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager he later shot. The deceptive edits were shown three times on NBC’s “Today,” once on “NBC Nightly News,” and also in an article that appeared on MSNBC.com.
The improperly edited footage and its wide dissemination provoked Zimmerman to sue NBC and its parent company, NBC Universal, for defamation.
Just a few months later, MSNBC was back in the editing booth again as snooty correspondent Andrea Mitchell, not exactly a woman of the people, presented a dishonestly edited clip of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney supposedly being amazed at a sandwich ordering machine at a Wawa convenience store. In fact, he was actually making a point about how much better the private sector is at creating innovation than the government.
No doubt NBC and its defenders will proclaim no political motive in any of these infractions. That is predictable. What they will not be able to answer is why neither NBC or MSNBC has been exposed for editing news clips to skew things to the right. The problem is not simple sloppiness or incompetence.
