NBC Anchor Doesn't Correct Guest Who Calls George Zimmerman 'White Boy'

Friday morning, while filling in on MSNBC for anchor Thomas Roberts, NBC News’ Craig Melvin chose not to correct a guest who falsely described George Zimmerman, the Florida man recently acquitted for the fatal shooting of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, as a “white boy.”

Zimmerman is Hispanic.

The guest was Simeon Wright, cousin of Emmett Till, the black fourteen-year-old tortured and lynched in 1955. Till’s brutal murder was a turning point in the Civil Rights movement.

MSNBC Anchor Craig Melvin:  …Oprah Winfrey just recently caught some flak for comparing the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin to the murder of Emmett Till. [They] were killed under different circumstances; what do you make of those comparisons that are being made between the two?

Simeon Wright: The comparison to me is similar; there are a lot of parallels between Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin. Number one: Trayvon was killed by a white boy that got out of his truck armed to the teeth — chased him down, did kill him. And then the jury did the same thing they did in 1955 with Emmett Tille: they came back with a non-guilty vote. That broke my heart. That tells me that things have not changed as much as people would like to say they have changed. I asked my wife this morning if she had ever been consulted on one of these polls [that show racism is less of a problem today]. I’ve never been asked about one of these polls.  

MSNBC Anchor: We’ll leave it there.

Melvin’s editorial decision to let the falsehood about Zimmerman’s race stand as a truth is in keeping with the cynical, inflammatory, and dishonest way almost all of the media have reported on the Zimmerman case, not just NBC News.

Though Zimmerman is Hispanic and all the evidence proves that race was not a factor in the tragic shooting, the media, President Obama, and Al Sharpton have all conspired to pull off a race hoax on the American people by pretending that race was an issue, even a black vs. white issue.

NBC News, CNN, the AP, Washington Post, and a host of other mainstream media outlets have either refused to identify Zimmerman as Hispanic, or they have stripped him of his racial identity by describing him as a “white Hispanic” (like President Obama, Zimmerman has one white parent), or some variation of a “self-described Hispanic.”  

For maliciously editing a 911 call in order to make it sound as though Zimmerman had racially-profiled Trayvon Martin just moments before the fatal shooting, NBC News is already embroiled in a lawsuit.

Apparently, the network has not learned its lesson and no memo has been released demanding factual accuracy and integrity.