The behavior that Fox News affiliate WBFF-TV has displayed in reporting a story involving protestors in a Baltimore community just days after the senseless killing of two New York Police Officers by a mentally disturbed man who traveled from Baltimore after tragedy shooting his girlfriend was categorically wrong and bordered on inciting violence against other cops had their act not been exposed.
The news station intentionally reported that the protestors chanted “kill a cop”, and further attempted to bolster their reporting by editing footage that allegedly showed that those were in fact the words being said.
Gawker, the website, reported Monday that the affiliate, WBFF-TV, had edited footage of a protest chant last weekend to make it sound like a call to murder police, the news outlet reports.
The actual chant went “We won’t stop, we can’t stop, ’til killer cops are in cell blocks,” according to C-SPAN footage, the report says. ButWBFF cut the audio short, telling viewers that the words were “We won’t stop, we can’t stop, so kill a cop,” the report says.
The station apologized Monday on both its Facebook page and in an interview with one of the protestors leading the chant, Tawanda Jones (pictured), Talking Points Memo writes.
“Although last night’s report reflected an honest misunderstanding of what the protesters were saying, we apologize for the error,” the post read.
“We have deleted the story on our webpage and we offered to have Ms. Jones on Fox45 News at 5:00 tonight for a live interview,” it continued.
In that interview, Jones reprimanded the station several times for misrepresenting her words.
“The interesting part that really gets to me is, where you guys edited it and stopped — like, how could that be a mistake?” she said.
“Once you play that whole thing, you would know that’s not something that’s being said,” she added.
Not too long after the edited video went viral, there were many individuals blaming Reverend Al Sharpton and New York Mayor Bill Deblasio for the killing of the two officers when in fact the person responsible took his own life and that’s where the story should have ended.
