The folks at MSNBC were at it again Monday.
During a segment on the Martin Bashir show, the producers chose to air only five seconds of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s 65-second answer at a press conference Monday to make it appear that he would have a completely different view of Stop and Frisk if he had a son (video follows with transcript and commentary):
JOY-ANN REID. SUBSTITUTE HOST: I want to play something for you that Mayor Bloomberg said in his news conference today, he was talking about Stop and Frisk in a way that's interesting because it recalls what President Obama said would happen had he had a son. Just listen to this and I'll get your response.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NEW YORK CITY MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: I think if I had a son and that son was stopped, I would have some real questions about it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
REID: So Mayor Bloomberg is essentially saying that if he had a son and he was stopped, he would feel differently about Stop and Frisk. How do you respond to that given how vigorously he and other proponents of this kind of policing have defended the practice? They're essentially admitting that if this were happening to their children, if it were happening to their sons, they wouldn't like it. Why can't they take that next step and then understand why these communities that are experiencing don't want it?
Actually, if Reid and MSNBC had been honest with viewers, they would have aired the next 60 seconds of Bloomberg’s answer which fully explained why possibly not liking Stop and Frisk for personal reasons wouldn't necessarily lead an intelligent person to oppose it:
BLOOMBERG: I think if I had a son and that son was stopped, I would have some real questions about it. Having said that, I think if I thought long and hard about it, I actually thought that [New York City mayoral candidate] Bill Thompson (D) said it right. Bill Thompson said he didn’t like Stop and Frisk, but he had a son. He wanted to make sure the kid didn’t get killed, and the only way we should do that is get guns off the streets.
If you’ve got a better answer, and one that you’re willing to try and see whether, “Well, let’s see if another few hundred people get killed. Okay, it didn’t work, and we’ll go back.” This is, we’re playing life and death here, and this is just not something. But, yeah, if anything, if it’s personal, if you have something happen to you, you feel about it very differently. That doesn’t mean you can’t stop and say, “Wait a second. No matter how much I dislike it.”
Take a look at public housing. Five percent of the public lives in public housing. 20 percent of the crime in this city is in public housing. We have to do something to stop that. Nobody likes cops in the halls in public housing, but they dislike the fact that they’d be taken away even more because that’s what’s protecting them to the extent we can possibly do it.
Far different than the five seconds Reid and MSNBC chose to show viewers, isn’t it?
And this is what is called journalism at MSNBC: taking five seconds out of a 65-second statement to completely distort someone's words.
Makes you wonder how this network continues to get away with it.
