"George Zimmerman has filed his defamation lawsuit against NBC and three reporters for their false editing..."

"... of his non-emergency call to police to report Trayvon Martin..."

The 24-page complaint alleges “NBC News saw the death of Trayvon Martin not as a tragedy but as an opportunity to increase ratings, and so set about to create the myth that George Zimmerman was a racist and predatory villain.”

ADDED: More detail here.

"A presidential candidate who gives millions of dollars a year to charity does a storm relief event in Ohio..."

"... and an MSNBC anchor is disgusted by it because the Red Cross would prefer people donating cash"... even with the large video monitors displaying the message "Sandy: Support the Relief Effort. Text ’REDCROSS’ to 90999 to make a $10 donation."

"The P90X is very tough. I got the DVDs. I made it to the first part. Then I just put on 'Finding Nemo.' "

Jimmy Fallon, joking about Paul Ryan — "The guy is ripped" — with Nancy Pelosi, whose own joke was: "I don't really know him well because I've never been to the gym." And he doesn't know you because he's never been to the plastic surgeon. I'm not knocking her plastic surgery there. I'm just demonstrating how easy it is to write jokes like that.

And as long as I'm grabbing links from Drudge... those late-night joke writers better bear down and work a lot harder, seeing as NBC — home of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon"—  just axed 20 staffers from "The Tonight Show."

"I’d like to feel sorry for NBC for coming under such a plainly false accusation of racial intent."

"Except it’s what NBC does to others all the time, including when dealing with Mitt Romney...."

"Twitter was forced to admit it breached the trust of its users when it apologized for suspending the account of Guy Adams..."

"...  a Los Angeles correspondent for the U.K.'s Independent newspaper."

"NBC tape delay coverage is like the airlines..."

"... its interest is in giving you the least satisfactory service you will still come back for."

HBO drops Roger Ailes TV movie because it "could never be seen as objective."

That's their asserted reason. They cite their "CNN affiliation," which would supposedly interfere with their presentation of a movie that was being executive produced by MSNBC.

The HBO movie would have been based on the upcoming manuscript by media writer Gabriel Sherman who has written two cover stories for New York magazine on Ailes and Fox News, including his mammoth article “The Elephant In The Green Room” which prompted complaints from the Fox News CEO.

How can the reason be true? It it were true, they wouldn't have started the project in the first place.

The news of dropping the project comes after Nikki Finke revealed that it existed, saying:

HBO appears obsessed by GOP Conservatives. There have been movies about the 2000 Bush vs Gore election standoff and Sarah Palin and most recently a TV series featuring George W Bush’s severed head. Now HBO has done a secret deal for an Untitled Roger Ailes Project....

WaPo's Eric Wemple credits Andrea Mitchell with airing the full context of Romney's "Wawa" remark...

... and seems to accept MSNBC's refusal to give Mitchell's critics a real apology:

In the unedited version, Mitt Romney comes off as highly impressed with Wawa’s sando-kiosks. And in MSNBC’s edited version, Mitt Romney comes off as highly impressed with Wawa’s sando-kiosks.

In a statement sent to me this afternoon, MSNBC stands behind the editing: “MSNBC did not edit anything out of order or out of sequence and at no time did we intend to deceive our viewers.”

But the video at the link, which bills itself as the "full Romney video" is still clipped out of context. It's not "unedited" as Wemple asserts! It lacks the anecdote about the optometrist dealing with government bureaucracy, which is why Romney told the Wawa story: for contrast. The point wasn't: gee whiz, technology is amazing. The point was: Government, unlike private business, lacks the incentives to make things easy and efficient. Yes, the new clip contains a summary to that effect, but the rest of the context is missing. The effort is to make Romney sound as silly and scattered as possible. Under criticism, some of the context was put back. But it was only enough to try to palm it off as context, and the Washington Post is promoting the palm-off.

Look at the full text compared to the MSNBC clip (and compare it to what Wemple displays as the "unedited" clip). It's actually a coherent, incisive speech and there's nice rapport with the audience!

Anyone not blinded by a wishful desire for Obama to win knows that Obama would never have been edited like that. And if somehow a short clip (like MSNBC's original Wawa clip) had gone out and gotten mocked, the mainstream media would have fallen over itself getting out the longest, most favorable form of the context, used the occasion to promote whatever point Obama was making and to praise him for his brilliance and eloquence in making that point, and denounced right-wing media for its nefarious out-of-context attack.

Wemple does go on to say that Wawa really is in the forefront of technology here, and it actually wasn't dumb to get gaga for Wawa. Fine. That too. But the key point — maybe the central theme of Romney's campaign — is that competition, free markets, and capitalism work and he's the guy who really knows about it. He's a pretty exciting candidate when you think about the expertise he's offering to bring to running the federal bureaucracy. That's what the mainstream media doesn't want people to see. Only Obama is exciting. Only Obama is brilliant. But no! Both candidates are brilliant and exciting. The question is which way do you want to go?

"Today Show Covered Benefits of MS Patients Riding Horses Same Day O'Donnell Mocked Ann Romney For It."

NBC stumbles into some bad luck as Jack Osbourne — Ozzy's son — comes out with an announcement of MS, causing some un-Romney-related coverage of the disease.

"Fox went with GloatFest 2012... MSNBC went with MSN be sad."

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"NBC 6 Miami... writers are repeating false information from one story to the next, spreading it like a virus."

"Not just one writer, but several. Not just one time, but multiple times. Even after two weeks, and notwithstanding updates to the original articles, the three articles with the distorted, racially charged quote are still up on NBC 6 Miami's website. I think the responsibility for that lies with NBC 6 Miami's senior management. They need a jolt."

"This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black."

That is the most outrageous, truly evil editing I've ever seen. The original, nefariously compressed by NBC, was:

Zimmerman: 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.

Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?

Zimmerman: He looks black.

NBC now serves up a weak apology. I hope Zimmerman sues.

Flashback: Remember when Shirley Sherrod sued Andrew Breitbart for presenting the center section of a speech she gave, where she admitted discriminating against a white man, and left out the ending, where she talked about her realization that what matters isn't race, but class. I wonder if those who were outraged at Breitbart are outraged by the much more outrageous editing done by NBC.

ADDED: Some commenters question the way I referred to the Sherrod-Breitbart conflict. I will answer by referring to what I wrote at the time, back in July 2010.

Ludicrous excuse for Chelsea Clinton's failure as a journalist.

"Some sources believe Chelsea was 'set up for a fall'..."

Our source said NBC “created unrealistic expectations....”

If you accept a job that you're not capable of doing, you're setting yourself up. If the expectations were unrealistic, you should have said no. Don't compound your failure as a journalist with a display of character failure. You're a Clinton, and that brings some advantages, but there's also the disadvantage that whatever you do may resonate with the wrong Clinton characteristics.

Speaking of bullshit. Here's the NBC response to the rumors that Chelsea's on the outs:

“100 percent false. You will see more pieces from Chelsea. She has been warmly welcomed into this news division, and we can’t be more pleased with her work. We hope she will be with us for a long time. There was no over-hyping of her role.”

So... they're not even trying to look credible. Great branding, NBC News!

"Olbermann's back."

"Yeah, I know. What a lame PR stunt. MSNBC wanted get in on some of that Juan Williams action."

(Dialogue at Meadhouse just now.)

Olbermann's mini-exile is over.

I hope MSNBC succeeded in proving whatever its point was to you.

ThinkProgress festoons itself with updates of shame.

I'm willing to believe there's something screwy about MSNBC's suspension of Keith Olbermann, but Think Progress's eagerness to blame a conservative resulted in an elaborate post that is now so studded with backtracking updates as to be unreadable.

"It's a negative intensity" between John McCain and Sarah Palin.

As witnessed and characterized by NBC's Chuck Todd:



Is he blaming her? Is she blaming him?

"I can't emphasize enough the odd body language."

Harsh, but not all that unbelievable.

ADDED: "Chuck Todd" sounds like inappropriate personal advice to Sarah Palin.

So Tom Brokaw is fretting about criticism that NBC shows favoritism toward Obama.

On Sunday, I commented on how odd it was that Tom Brokaw ended a "Meet the Press" interview with Steve Schmidt and David Axelrod by saying -- seemingly out of nowhere -- that "in fairness to everybody here" he should tell us about a poll showing that, 53 to 42 percent, Americans think McCain is better suited to be commander in chief. That made me suspect that "Inside NBC, they are fretting about criticism that they show favoritism toward Obama, so Brokaw thought it might help to lob out a glaring hunk of McCain favoritism."

So I was very interested in this-behind-the-scenes report:

In an interview here after Sunday’s ["Meet the Press"] broadcast, Mr. Brokaw said that over the summer he had “advocated” within the executive suite of NBC News to modify the anchor duties of the MSNBC hosts Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews on election night and on nights when there were presidential debates....

Mr. Brokaw said he had also conducted some shuttle diplomacy in recent weeks between NBC and the McCain campaign. His mission, he said, was to assure the candidate’s aides that — despite some negative on-air commentary by Mr. Olbermann in particular — Mr. McCain could still get a fair shake from NBC News. Mr. Brokaw said he had been told by a senior McCain aide, whom he did not name, that the campaign had been reluctant to accept an NBC representative as one of the moderators of the three presidential debates — until his name was invoked.

“One of the things I was told by this person was that they were so irritated, they said, ‘If it’s an NBC moderator, for any of these debates, we won’t go,’ ” Mr. Brokaw said. “My name came up, and they said, ‘Oh, hell, we have to do it, because it’s going to be Brokaw.’ ”

I was right.

***

This is good too -- Brokaw showing his exasperation with Schmidt and Axelrod:

“They didn’t come very prepared on the economy,” he said. “They’re both trying to give the impression they’re involved, but plainly they’re not.”

“I was interested in how the two of them stuck by their budget programs,” he said. “There was nothing that Obama has proposed that he’s willing to cut. McCain insisted he could balance a budget with spending cuts. Give me” — and here he paused for emphasis — “a break. Nobody believes that, in either case.”

Absolutely right.

Tom Brokaw's bizarre idea of what fairness required.

Steve Schmidt and David Axelrod were on "Meet the Press" this morning, and they spewed talking points and evaded the questions asked by Tom Brokaw. Here's the best example of that:

MR. BROKAW: Let me just share with you what The Wall Street Journal had to say about the opening statements of your two candidates at the debate the other night.

"The debate took place amid the backdrop of the financial crisis, and perhaps most disappointing was how neither man seemed to have anything useful to say about it. ... What neither man showed was any real insight about our financial market issues, or any political courage in offering a solution."

Are you going to have to go back and replate [sic] your economic program, Mr. Axelrod, going forward, because of the changed conditions that result--as a result of this bailout program?

MR. AXELROD: Well, first of all, I don't accept the premise of the Journal piece. The fact is that Senator Obama's been warning for a year and a half about this crisis--about the possibility of such a crisis because of the lack of oversight and greed on Wall Street... But the decisions we make are to prioritize, and this is what Senator Obama said that night, are to prioritize the middle class. What was phenomenal about that debate was that in 40 minutes on the economy, Senator McCain never once mentioned the middle class, never talked about the struggles people are going through. We need to create an economic recovery plan that puts at its core the middle class in this country.

MR. SCHMIDT: Well, Tom, you know, this was a debate about national security, about foreign policy. You never heard the word victory from Senator Obama when it came to wars this country's fighting. But we did talk about the middle class.....

Translation: The Wall Street Journal is absolutely right! The candidates have no real insight about our financial market issues and no political courage in offering a solution.

I'm skipping all the other blah blah blah, which you can read at the link. It's about Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, al Qaeda, etc. Then Brokaw ends the interview like this:

MR. BROKAW: In fairness to everybody here, I'm just going to end on one note, and that is that we continue to poll on who's best equipped to be commander in chief, and John McCain continues to lead in that category despite the criticism from Barack Obama by a factor of 53 to 42 percent in our latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

Gentlemen, thank you very much. I wish we could spend the rest of the day talking about these issues. But you're invited back, and I hope you'll make your second appearance right here on MEET THE PRESS.

What? Why was it a matter of "fairness to everybody here" to end the debate with a thudding, unanswered poll result? At the end of a discussion in which both candidates were perfectly well represented by their mouthpieces, Brokaw thought fairness required him to say, essentially, "Well, the American people still think McCain is much better on these questions."

Brokaw began the discussion by saying "We're not going to get into this business about who won and lost the debate." He made a point of not presenting Schmidt and Axelrod with poll numbers on that subject. And none of his other questions were based on polls, nor did Schmidt and Axelrod bring up any polls. So why did Brokaw end like that?

My guess? Inside NBC, they are fretting about criticism that they show favoritism toward Obama, so Brokaw thought it might help to lob out a glaring hunk of McCain favoritism. Sorry! That just looked really weird. Consequently, it reinforced the perception that NBC favors Obama.

UPDATE: I was right!

"The most disappointing shift is to see the partisan attitude move from prime time into what’s supposed to be straight news programming."

MSNBC is giving up on Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as co-anchors for election coverage. The quote -- in this NYT article about the decision, comes from Davidson Goldin, who used to be the editorial director of MSNBC. He may be very sad to see news coverage go partisan, but that can't be why MSNBC pulled the plug on Keith and Chris.

Executives at the channel’s parent company, NBC Universal, had high hopes for MSNBC’s coverage of the political conventions. Instead, the coverage frequently descended into on-air squabbles between the anchors, embarrassing some workers at NBC’s news division, and quite possibly alienating viewers. Although MSNBC nearly doubled its total audience compared with the 2004 conventions, its competitive position did not improve, as it remained in last place among the broadcast and cable news networks. In prime time, the channel averaged 2.2 million viewers during the Democratic convention and 1.7 million viewers during the Republican convention.

The success of the Fox News Channel in the past decade along with the growth of political blogs have convinced many media companies that provocative commentary attracts viewers and lures Web browsers more than straight news delivered dispassionately.

It was all about ratings, wasn't it? The decision to use this format, the "high hopes," and the pulling of the plug.