Chris Matthews Claims No Injury Visible in Zimmerman Tape, Staff Contradicts During Same Broadcast

Last Thursday, Chris Matthews spent a portion of his show discussing the Trayvon Martin story. Early in the show he introduced a security tape which ABC had obtained from the polic, saying:

Chris Matthews: George Zimmerman says he shot Trayvon Martin after Trayvon broke his nose and repeatedly slammed the back of his head into a concrete sidewalk, but newly released video tape of Zimmerman arriving at the police station–we’re looking at it there–appears to show no evidence of a broken nose or obvious wounds to the back of Zimmerman’s head.

That’s the story much of the media was running with at the time. But in Matthews’ case, he had a guest on near the end of the same show who contradicted his earlier statement:

Ron Allen: We were able to zoom into the back of his head and there is some sort of abrasion. I’m not a doctor but thereis some sort of abrasion or something on the back of his head which seems to suggest…which seems to give some more credibility to his story.

At this point, a zoomed in image of Zimmerman’s head appears on the screen, clearly showing an injury. The image is wrapped in a white border on a blue background. It was obviously prepared for air by someone on Matthew’s staff. This raises an obvious question. If Matthew’s staff had the image waiting to drop in over the live shot of correspondent Ron Allen, why did Matthews open the show as he did?

Remember, Matthews had just claimed 50 minutes earlier that “newly released video tape of Zimmerman arriving at the police station…appears to show no…obvious wounds to the back of Zimmerman’s head.” Shouldn’t someone have pointed out to Matthews that this wasn’t true? Why didn’t they?

Unless Matthew’s producers received the image after the life show had already begun airing, it’s hard to understand why this fairly significant piece of information appeared later in the show but not earlier. The link below shows a video comparison of what Matthews claimed early in the show and what he showed later.