Accuracy In Media
Only posting a link. Well, several links. This is Ed Driscoll quoting John Nolte of :
This is at least the fifth time in recent years that NBC or MSNBC has gotten caught cooking the books, John Nolte writes at Big Journalism:
1. During last year’s presidential election Andrea Mitchell was caught manufacturing a Romney gaffe where none existed.
2. During last year’s GOP primary, Ed Schultz edited video of Texas Governor Rick Perry to make him look racist.
3. In April of last year, the “Today Show” was caught editing audio of a 9-1-1 call to make George Zimmerman look racist.
4. In August of 2009, Contessa Brewer sliced and diced a photograph so it wouldn’t look like a black man attended a Tea Party carrying a firearm.
And just today, NBC was caught in yet another malicious edit, this time to make Second Amendment advocates look as though they did something as heinous as heckling the heartsick father of a child who lost his six-year-old son in the Sandy Hook massacre. You can watch the full video and NBC’s science fiction adaptation side-by-side here.
You may ask why they practice such deception when it is certain to be discovered and exposed? The reason is simple psychology. First impressions are deeper impressions than corrections. I have a friend who saw the first version, the edited version, of the NBC agitprop, and it convinced him that the NRA were autistic when it came to normal social graces, heartless and fanatical. Upon seeing the second version, the unedited version, his first impression still persisted.
The second reason is that second thoughts tend to be tentative, and people tend not to believe that they are being lied to. Their own fairmindedness makes them gullible. Upon hearing two versions of any story, the natural reaction of any casual listener is to assume both versions are slanted to favor their side, and that the truth is perhaps somewhere in the middle. So if I falsely accuse an innocent group of ten people of wrongdoing, the average bystander, if he later hears my false accusation disputed, will assume that five or six of the people are guilty, rather than assume I lied and admit that he was deceived.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
