http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/08/us-usa-florida-shooting-nbc-idUSBRE83609U20120408
Trayvon Martin call was "mistake, not deliberate": NBC
(Reuters) - NBC News' decision to air an edited call from George Zimmerman to police in the moments before he shot Trayvon Martin was "a mistake and not a deliberate act to misrepresent the phone call," according to the president of the network's news division.
The edit in question, which aired on the network's flagship "Today" morning show last week, made it appear that Zimmerman told police that Martin was black without being prompted, when, in fact, the full tape reveals that the neighborhood watch captain only did so when responding to a question posed by a dispatcher.
Under growing public pressure to explain the incident, NBC News President Steve Capus provided Reuters with the fullest explanation to date of how the edited call made it on air and what the network is doing to prevent such a consequential error from happening again.
Capus confirmed a previous Reuters report that an internal network investigation had determined that a producer made the editing error, and that the network's editorial controls - including senior broadcast producer oversight, script editors and often legal and standards department reviews of sensitive material to be broadcast - simply missed the selective editing of the phone call.
He said the producer has been fired and "several people" involved were disciplined, though he declined to specify the nature of the disciplinary actions, saying they were internal personnel matters.
Sources at the network told Reuters on Thursday that NBC News executives did not know the emergency call was misleadingly edited until news reports surfaced days later on blogs including newsbusters.org and Breitbart.com.
Those blogs, along with media critics and rival networks, have charged that the edited call has inflamed racial tensions in an already volatile situation.
Sources inside the network have told Reuters that NBC News brass interviewed more than a dozen staffers during its investigation of the matter.
As part of the investigation, the producer who edited the call was questioned extensively about motivation,
and it was determined that the person had cut the video clip down to meet a maximum time requirement for the length of the segment - a common pressure in morning television - and inadvertently edited the call in a way that proved misleading.
NBC News has apologized for the incident, saying in a statement to Reuters earlier this week that there was "an editing error in the production process," but insisting the results of the internal investigation would not be announced publicly.
Capus said that the network "takes its responsibility seriously" and has undertaken rigorous efforts to formalize the editorial safeguards in place at the network.
He said that NBC News' broadcast standards department, led by David McCormick, has been holding meetings with various NBC News shows, as well as the network's specialized units, which handle sometimes complicated subjects like medical or legal news. Capus added that he also is holding meetings among the network executives to reinforce the lessons learned from the investigation into the edited call.