BREAKING: Michael Brown Audio Aired By CNN Authenticated
Video texting service Glide has verified the exact time the audio recording with gunshots on it was made.
Video messaging service Glide has confirmed to the Washington Post the exact time and date the audio recording with gunshot sounds on it was made. CNN played the audio recording earlier this week, but could not independently authenticate it.
The video texting service Glide has verified the recording played by CNN this week of the purported shots in the Ferguson, Mo., killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown. In an e-mail to the Erik Wemple Blog, Glide head of communications Chaim Haas reports:
Because Glide is the only messaging application using streaming video technology, each message is simultaneously recorded and transmitted, so the exact time can be verified to the second. In this case, the video in question was created at 12:02:14 PM CDT on Saturday, August 9th.
Glide has also posted a note on its Web site. In a brief chat with the Erik Wemple Blog, Haas said, “The question we are being asked is is this authentic and the answer is absolutely.” Notification to the FBI, said Haas, “is taking place.”
I initially had doubts about it, but when I heard it was part of a recorded video chat -- I thought it was a Skype chat at the time -- I figured it would be authenticated, and now it has.
While we were waiting for some form of official verification, CNN and anyone who posted or played the audio was targeted by right wing blogs for scorn and criticism. CNN also put on a couple of former cops to rebut the possibility that it was accurate. One suggested that it could possibly be "something one of Howard Stern's punk people have been doing," which infuriated the lawyer who brought the recording forward.
I think someone owes her a big apology and correction on the record.
Since this recording aligns with the time and date Michael Brown was shot, I think it's fair to say that Darren Wilson emptied his gun into an unarmed young man who, for at least part of the time, was fleeing if you believe multiple eyewitness accounts.
Why isn't he under arrest yet? Will the prosecutor bring this audio recording to the Grand Jury?
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