https://spectator.us/topic/anti-police-media-lebron-james-mob-bryant/
NBC’s flagship news program completely garbled one of the week’s top stories: a deadly fight among teenage girls in Columbus, Ohio, which ended with a policeman shooting and killing a knife-wielding attacker, 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant. The network’s coverage was an abomination.
NBC omitted vital information and distorted what actually happened. The Biden White House immediately piled on, insisting that the Columbus shooting was the product of racism. They did so at an incredibly sensitive moment — minutes after a Minneapolis jury convicted policeman Derek Chauvin of murdering George Floyd.
Since ‘NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt’ and other media programs did not report the Columbus story fairly or accurately, let’s do so here.
What happened on the ground
The fatal incident began with a desperate phone call from the girls being attacked. The victims specifically gave 911 their address and mentioned that the attackers are ‘trying to fight us, trying to stab us,’ crying out for the police to come immediately. NBC misreported that. They played the tape but clipped the tiny part about ‘trying to stab us.’
The police responded immediately and arrived while the attack was in progress, according to video footage from the two officers’s body cameras. Police ordered everyone to drop to the ground. They didn’t. The frenzied fight among the young women continued. Ma’Khia Bryant was about to stab a victim, it seemed; her knife was raised above the victim’s head, and she had already refused the order to stop and drop to the ground. To prevent the stabbing in progress, one policeman made a split-second decision to shoot. He appears to have fired four times at Ms. Bryant. She fell, dropping the knife. Police tried to resuscitate her, but she died there. Columbus police have identified the officer as Nicholas Reardon. He has been taken off street duty while a full investigation is conducted, as is normal practice.
How it was reported and tweeted
How did NBC report the incident? First, NBC Nightly News edited the 911 call to omit the phrase that the attacker was ‘trying to stab us.’ Second, when they showed the police video, they omitted the shot of the knife in the attacker’s hand. Taken together, those two omissions completely erased the lethal threat to the victim, which had been mentioned in the emergency call and was apparent on the video.
These omissions are not sloppy editing by a summer intern. They seem to be a deliberate misrepresentation of the day’s lead story. Worse, this malicious distortion comes amid a dangerous national controversy over racism and excessive use of police force.
Has NBC apologized or corrected their story? Of course not.