John Nolte has a follow up on yesterday’s story about ABC and their edit of the First Lady’s comments about a shooting in Chicago. ABC says the inaccurate comments the First Lady made were edited out “for time.”
If this sounds familiar it’s because the same excuse was given by NBC after they were caught editing the George Zimmerman 911 call in a way that made him appear racist. Their internal investigation determined “the person had cut the video clip down to meet a maximum
time requirement for the length of the segment…and inadvertently edited the call in a way that
proved misleading.” In Zimmerman’s case, it was just a coincidence that the edit matched the claims of racism that were surrounding the case at the time.
In the case of ABC, their time edit just happens to remove a remark that demonstrates the First Lady doesn’t know much about the details of the case she is discussing or about guns in general. That’s not a crime obviously but if you’re going to be an advocate for gun control it certainly doesn’t help your case. Had the First Lady given this interview to an organization that was less sympathetic to her cause, the part that was cut might have become the story or at least a noteworthy sidebar: First Lady Reveals Lack of Familiarity with Guns She Seeks to Control.