NBC News deceptively edited 911 tapes to make George Zimmerman seem like a racist, and now NBC Sports has come under fire for not airing the most salient, newsworthy, and damning part of the exchange between Bob Costas and former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky. Sandusky is the alleged pedophile who is on trial after being accused of sexually abusing young boys while he was coaching at Penn State.
In an exchange between Costas and Sandusky, Sandusky, whose lawyer for some reason allowed him to go on the show, admitted, “I didn’t go around seeking out every young person for sexual needs that I’ve helped.” But that portion was never aired in November of 2011.
The Sun-Times reported on the full exchange that was not aired:
Costas responded by challenging Joe Paterno’s one-time coordinator, “But isn’t what you’re just describing the classic MO of many pedophiles? And that is that they gain the trust of young people, they don’t necessarily abuse every young person. … So it’s entirely possible that you could’ve helped young boy A in some way that was not objectionable while horribly taking advantage of young boy B, C, D and E. Isn’t that possible?”
Then came the sound bite NBC should have aired on every television set around the country as soon it was muttered from Sandusky’s mouth.
“Well — you might think that,” Sandusky said. “I don’t know. In terms of — my relationship with so many, many young people. I would — I would guess that there are many young people who would come forward. Many more young people who would come forward and say that my methods and — and what I had done for them made a very positive impact on their life. And I didn’t go around seeking out every young person for sexual needs that I’ve helped. There are many that I didn’t have — I hardly had any contact with who I have helped in many, many ways.”
An NBC news executive e-mailed the Sun-Times with this explanation: “There were a lot of compelling comments in the original interview, but we did not have time to include them all.”
However, the comments they omitted just happened to be the most compelling of them all. NBC was protecting an alleged pedophile or has absolutely no sense of what news is. Either way, this omission reflects terribly on NBC.
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