Friday, April 6, 2012

NBC's Kleagle has a name-- Jim Bell

Bryan Preston at PJ Media has a post on the identity of the "seasoned producer" who intentionally inflamed racial hatred in the Trayvon Martin killing by fraudulently editing Zimmerman's 911 tape to make it look as though Zimmerman was explicitly targeting Martin because of his race.

Preston:

NBC’s deliberate edit was an attempt to build a narrative that George Zimmerman killed Trayvon out of racial animosity, but that does not square up with facts. NBC’s editors and producers knew that when they deliberately cut an important section out of the audio recording of Zimmerman’s 911 call. Someone in the network must answer for this deception, publicly. But NBC is hiding behind weak apologies and phony claims that the edit was a “mistake.”
Today‘s latest statement indicates that a “seasoned producer” was involved. A “seasoned producer” knows what they are doing, or should, and does not make an embarrassing “mistake” like the Zimmerman edit. Whoever this “seasoned producer” is, nothing gets on the air on a show like Today without the show’s executive producer’s approval. The executive producer of the Today show is Jim Bell. His bio describes him as a “hands on producer.” The 44-year-old Bell also fits the description of a “seasoned producer.”...

Bell’s show helped contribute to the racial tensions that have followed the Zimmerman/Martin shooting. George Zimmerman’s entire family is now living in hiding, and they have been subjected to thousands of death threats. NBC’s Jim Bell is responsible for the content that airs on the show that he executive produces. 
NBC must come clean. Who else was involved in this deception, and what does the network intend to do to try to win back some measure of the public’s trust? Hollow apologies and false claims that “mistakes were made” would not be acceptable to NBC in any investigative journalism it produces, and it will not suffice in this case.

Now some of my readers may object to my use of "Kleagle" to describe Bell. A Kleagle is a local officer of the Ku Klux Klan who is responsible for recruitment. I think that my analogy between NBC's actions here and the Klan is quite close, actually, despite the fact that the Klan stoked anti-black, not anti-white, hate.

Stoking hate is a tried-and-true strategy for personal gain. The KKK was a powerful organization in the South for decades, and during the 1920's it practically ran the state of Indiana. We make a mistake to assume that organized incitement to hate is mere expression of personal bigotry. It is much more. It is a marketing strategy, and ad campaign. It is a lucrative business plan. Hate pays.

People who lie to stoke hatred against whites share much in common with people who lie to stoke hatred against blacks. As with hatred against Jews, and against Catholics, etc. The methods differ little. People who desecrate synagogues and people who slander Catholics and people who burn crosses on the lawns of black families and people who edit 911 tapes to inflame racial hatred share much in common.

In America, inflaming racial and religious hatred has been a reliable cash-cow for bigots like Al Sharpton and David Duke and Louis Farakhan and Frank Collin and Jesse Jackson and Charles Coughlin.

NBC is just the latest gang to catch on. NBC is amoral, for sure, but not stupid. Stoking hate for personal and corporate gain is a winner's game.

If it works for Al Sharpton's National Action Network and Louis Farakhan's Nation of Islam and Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH, it'll work for 30 Rockefellar Center.

You've just seen the roll-out.

6 comments:

  1. The rest of the production team needs to be summarily dismissed. As a publicly traded company they have violated a number of federal laws regarding racial harassment and MUST be held accountable. As a matter of course each and every member on that production team involved with thei blatant civil rights violation needs to face federal charges.....

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  2. THANK YOU, you satisfied my need to rant by saying it perfectly. You know you try hard not to believe in conspiracy theories, and yet here were left with an example CLEAR AS DAY that the mass media is trying to encourage and inflame hatred based on identity. It's just maddening, you try and think rationally and say of course something as ludicrous as lizards or masons running the world is absurd and only paranoid people would believe such things yet we're left with this, THIS- a clear cut example that the mass media has some political agenda to create hatred on ethnic grounds. Violence in rap music- self explanatory. But oh what does this say, it really leaves me speechless.

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    1. Evelyn,

      Thanks for your comment. I too felt perplexity and rage at the editing. I wondered "why"? They were likely to be caught, and the act is beneath contempt.

      Then I realized that such hate-mongering is to m.o. for quite a few people-- Sharpton, etc-- and they are wildly successful doing it.

      So why wouldn't a news network use the same approach, on a bigger scale? A good parallel, as you have noted, is rap music. It is marketed by mainstream white guys in business suits-- SONY, etc-- and it is the most vile bilge imaginable.

      Follow the money.

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    2. No a sincere thanks, this time reading this has finally given me the nudge to restart my blog and start writing seriously again. Your blog gave me that motivation again, so thank you!

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    3. Evelyn,

      Great! Please send the URL so I can link it.

      All the best!

      Mike

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    4. Hey, thanks Mike, its appreciated

      http://evelynworthington.blogspot.ca/

      E

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