*NBC News has fired the producer it determined was the most responsible for the airing of a selectively edited 911 call placed by George Zimmerman the night he killed Trayvon Martin.
Sources at NBC who asked not to be identified confirmed a New York Times story saying that a Miami-based producer was fired Thursday, though the sources refused to identify the former employee, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The offending segment aired on NBC’s “Today” show March 27 but went widely unnoticed until it was highlighted by conservative outlets such as the Media Research Center and Breitbart.com.
Two days after the “Today” gaffe, Sean Hannity ran a segment about NBC’s manipulation of the 911 call on his Fox News Channel show. The story went viral when the Drudge Report linked to a Hollywood Reporter story about the growing controversy last week.
In the original 911 call, Zimmerman is heard describing Martin as such: “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.”
The dispatcher then asks: “OK, and this guy – is he white, black or Hispanic?”
“He looks black,” Zimmerman responds.
The version NBC ran, though, was much shorter and did not include the question posed by the 911 operator.
“This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black,” Zimmerman is heard saying in NBC’s edited version.
The difference is significant, since activists have been claiming that Zimmerman had racially profiled Martin. Critics have argued that NBC set out to purposely advance that narrative by condensing the 911 tape to make it appear that Zimmerman’s motivation for assuming Martin was “up to no good” was based on his skin color.
NBC announced Saturday that it had launched an investigation into the matter, and on Tuesday it apologized for its “error” and said it had completed its inquiry.
“We will be taking the necessary steps to prevent this from happening in the future and apologize to our viewers,” NBC said Tuesday.
I’m just an audio guy.. I make no claims to anything else.
I took the 911 call with the most audio informatiion regarding screams, pulled down some of the louder noises (the actual shot and a few times the woman caller gets a bit loud) so they don’t hurt you while listening to the softer noises… Then ran it at a slower speed and pitch corrected it 100 percent true. Anyone with an ear for music can tell not a note has been changed.. Digital affords you this luxury. In the analog days we had to physically slow the tape/medium down and you lose pitch and clarity.
THIS AUDIO IS NOT ENHANCED per sey.. not like enhancing a photo.. the only enhancing has been to adust volume levels so you don’t hurt your ear listening to everything at relative volume levels.
There are a few swirling artifacts in this copy because I had to compres the wav file to a 128 kbps mp3 to fit on my page so you had a player to hear it on.. These artifacts are slight and will not distract.
http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=11548279
This exercise is just a way to access the call and hear things you would not of as easily (but every bit of audio information from the original is still there) just listening to the raw recording. Akin to slowing down video without the frame per second limitations.