NBC Caught Doctoring Audio Again

This is MSNBC, but if NBC considers them part of their "news family" than this is their baby, too.

NBC is doctoring audio a lot. Aren't they?

In this case, they are using the tactic I've noted quite a few times. They did this with Zimmerman, too, if you remember.

If you are given a chyron of text telling you what the speaker is ostensibly saying you will hear the speaker saying it, even if he is not in fact saying it at all.

It's an interesting demonstration of suggestibility.

Which apparently NBC doesn't know about, despite internet partisans using this trick over and over and over again.

CNN exposed this trick when the target was Clinton aide Mickey Kantor.

But when the media had the chance to lynch George Zimmerman, they forgot all about it, and permitted the suggested words to stick in people's minds. They began to walk their claims back when the only person they will accept criticism from, Jon Stewart, pointed out that Zimmerman's words did not in fact sound like "f***in' coons" at all. (Relevant portion starts at 4:23.)

So: CNN did not fall for the trick when it was directed against a liberal, Mickey Kantor. In that case, they exposed the trick and ran a segment on the chicanery.

But when the left uses the trick, CNN just runs with it.

So here we are again. Leftwing partisans make up a story using this technique -- suggesting you should hear words that weren't actually said -- and of course NBC reports it, because they don't mind being suckered by leftwing blogs and leftwing YouTube dirty-tricksters.

Watch the video, and see how a trick from a leftwing YouTube blogger became, without any fact-checking whatsoever, a nationally televised "fact" within hours.

At what point will "Real Journalists" grasp what lowly amateur bloggers have been explaining for six years?

Why This Trick Works: It works because people think they hear most words.

In fact, they rely on their eyes to "hear" words as much as their ears.

I realized this ten years ago as I got older and could not understand anyone when I was in a noisy bar -- unless I was looking right at them. Suddenly I could "hear" 90% of what they were saying.

If I was looking right at them, I could use both the limited amount I heard and add it to the lip-reading I had been doing, unconsciously, my whole life.

The eye is the king of the sensory organs. The eye trumps all.

When you add something for the eye -- lip movements, or chyron text suggesting to the eye (and then to the ears) what should be "heard" -- it wins the day. Given ambiguous inputs, the eye will "overrule" the ear and substitute its judgment.

posted by Ace at 02:27 PM

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