A little selective editing

By now you've probably heard of NBC's editing of George Zimmerman's 911 call. In case you haven't, the call actually went like this:

"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 spliced the tape to make it sound as if Zimmerman had said: "This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black." 

That's pretty much all you need to know about NBC. And you can be sure that the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, ABC, and CNN will give this egregious editing story minimal air time. Which is all you need to know about them. 

Imagine what would have happened Barack Obama's 2008 speech about race had been edited in a similar manner. 

One paragraph of that speech was, "Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans."

What if, say, Fox News had spliced it down to, "Throughout the first year of this campaign...we saw how hungry the American people were for...the Confederate Flag...and white Americans" and then played it that way over the air as an example of Obama's divisiveness?

Would the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, ABC, and CNN have let that editing story die? Ever?