Protester Confronts Fox Affiliate That Deceptively Edited 'Kill A Cop' Chant
Baltimore's Fox45 apologized for the "error" they made, deceptively editing protest video to make it appear they were chanting "kill a cop."
Local Fox affiliate WBFF "apologized" for their "mistake" deceptively editing video footage of protesters to make it appear they were chanting "kill a cop." Sorry, but calling it a "mistake" instead of owning up to what they did doesn't look like much of an "apology" to me.
WATCH: Protester Confronts Fox Station That Deceptively Edited 'Kill A Cop' Chant:
A Baltimore Fox affiliate apologized Monday night for a report it ran over the weekend that deceptively edited protesters to look like they were chanting "kill a cop."
Gawker originally caught WBFF chopping up footage of a protest chant to sound like incitement to murder police on Monday.
The chant went "we won't stop, we can't stop, 'til killer cops, are in cell blocks," according to C-SPAN footage.
But WBFF cut the audio short and told viewers that the words were in fact "we won't stop, we can't stop, so kill a cop."
The station apologized both on its Facebook page and in an interview with one of the protestors leading the chant, Tawanda Jones.
"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 called out 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. Read on...
Here's more from the Baltimore City Paper: Fox 45 botches apology for Tawanda Jones segment; not the first time reporter has made a major error:
Tonight, when Fox 45 "apologized" for a segment showing an edited video of protesters chanting, viewers must have had a hard time figuring out what they were apologizing for. The network aired the entire video, which showed Tawanda Jones, the sister of Tyrone West (who died in police custody), and Joseph Kent chanting, "We won't stop/ We can't stop/ Till killer cops/ Are in cell blocks" and then apologized for it, without ever saying that, last night, they aired an edited clip, which cut off the second half of the chant so that it appeared they were chanting "We won't stop/ We can't stop/ So kill a cop," an impression the reporter created by also saying that they were chanting about killing cops, just before tying it to the shooting of police officers in New York. The network tonight acted as if inviting Jones on to speak about police brutality and to clarify her position somehow explained or made up for the fact that they aired doctored material which entirely distorted the truth.
Last night's segment was reported by Fox 45's Melinda Roeder, an award-winning journalist who covers everything from floods to politics. But last night's misstep is not the first time she made waves with a controversial—or apparently bogus—story centered on the actions of members of a protest movement. On Oct. 31, 2011, Fox 45 aired Roeder's interview with a woman who claimed she had been raped in a tent on McKeldin Square during the Occupy Wall Street protest. Brietbart, the right-wing site, re-aired the segment. "You can go to Mercy Hospital," the woman, who was not identified, says on camera. "They have the full rape kit." […]
The IndyReader aired its own footage of the Fox news team's confrontation with members of the group, which tried to get outside media—and police—to take action against what they called a media "assault."
Fox never retracted the Occupy rape story. Roeder declined to talk to City Paper about the “killer cops” gaffe, referring City Paper to the news director, Mike Tomko.