The shooting death of black teen Trayvon Martin during a sidewalk confrontation with George Zimmerman in Orlando 10 years ago stoked the new civil rights movement – so claims a column and video for the opinion section of the Times marking the anniversary: “Trayvon Martin Is Still Making America Confront Its Original Sin.”
The video features race-baiting alleged civil rights leader Al Sharpton as well as former president Barack Obama and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
But Sharpton is not the most offensive part of the seven-minute video, which includes a lie -- a purposeful truncation of the famous 911 audio tape, altered to make George Zimmerman look racist. (Blow, a black liberal columnist for the paper, is listed as co-producer on the video,)
The video, in which Zimmerman’s acquittal is treated as a racial injustice, included an audio clip from the 911 call by Zimmerman, who shot and killed Martin. The audio clip was deliberately truncated, with a question from the 911 dispatcher removed to make Zimmerman look racist.
This is how the Times video quoted Zimmerman’s call, around 55 seconds in: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good or he’s on drugs or something. He looks black.”
The Times' closed-caption function delivers the above as a single uninterrupted quote.
Below is the transcript of the real exchange, as relayed by Brian Stelter back when he was with The Times, after NewsBusters caught NBC News playing the same sort of deceitful game with the 911 audio. It proves it was the 911 dispatcher, not Zimmerman, who initially brought up Martin’s race. Stelter described NBC's version of the quote as "grossly out of context":
“This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.” Then the dispatcher asked, “O.K., and this guy -- is he white, black or Hispanic?” Only then did Mr. Zimmerman say, “He looks black.”
Only recently did The Times escape a lawsuit for lying about Sarah Palin supposedly inspiring a mass shooting in Arizona.
After NewsBusters brought NBC’s lie to light, the NBC producer was fired.
