NBC “Nightly News” deceptively edited the 911 call and footage of a fatal police-involved shooting in its Wednesday night segment to conceal that the teenage girl who was shot and killed was charging another girl with a knife.
In the original body camera video released shortly after the shooting, 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant is shown running at another girl with the deadly weapon. The officer responding to the scene can be heard calling for everyone to get down several times before he fired off four shots directed at Bryant.
The audio featured on one of NBC’s most popular shows, however, omitted parts of the 911 call featuring frantic cries for help from people who claimed a girl was “trying to stab us.” Instead, NBC chose a quick audio clipping of someone saying, “We need a police officer here now.”
In stark contrast, CBS Evening News showed the important part of the 911 call. "These grown girls over here trying to fight us, trying to stab us," the caller says.
They also slow down the video and zoom in on the knife in the attacker's hand. pic.twitter.com/izvXaUH6Ki— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) April 22, 2021
While other corporate media outlets made a point to note the knife in Bryant’s hand, sometimes zooming in and freezing the video where it showed her wielding the weapon, NBC simply glossed over it and merely stated that authorities claimed, “She was threatening others with a knife.”
“Body camera footage shows a knife on the ground,” NBC stated, showing a screenshot of a knife lying in the driveway at the scene.
While ABC and CBS highlighted the knife in the attacker's hand, this is how NBC highlighted it. On the ground. pic.twitter.com/5v9odEuOIj
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) April 22, 2021
NBC’s unwillingness to feature all the evidence follows an evidenceless narrative created by media outlets, activists, and even the White House that this shooting was racially motivated.
“She was a child,” the White House said in a statement. “We know that police violence disproportionately impacts black and Latino people and communities and that black women and girls, like black men and boys, experience higher rates of police violence.”
Earlier this week, CBS News cropped body camera footage that showed a 13-year-old boy holding a gun before he was fatally shot by Chicago police in March. The video released this month appears to show Toledo holding a weapon moments before he was shot, but CBS News posted a clip to its website and Twitter page that cropped out parts of the footage that showed the teen’s alleged firearm.
Source: The Federalist
