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Home > NBC Airs, Then Repeatedly Censors 'Racist Image' Left By Escapees

NBC Airs, Then Repeatedly Censors 'Racist Image' Left By Escapees

By Matthew Balan | June 8, 2015 | 6:39 PM EDT
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NBC News censored itself on Sunday, after it broadcast the "have a nice day" message left by two prison escapees from New York State on Today. The Post-It note included a caricature of an East Asian man with slanted eyes, a bucktooth grin, and wearing a stereotypical conical hat. Hours later, when NBC Nightly News covered the manhunt for the fugitives, the newscast blurred out the "racially-offensive Post-it note," as John Yang labeled it, three separate times during the correspondent's report. [video below]

The following morning, Monday's Today also aired the censored version of the prisoners' note. Miguel Almaguer spotlighted that "they left behind a Post-it note with a racist image – reading, 'Have a nice day!'" By contrast, CBS This Morning and ABC's Good Morning America both ran the message completely uncensored. CBS's Don Dahler spotlighted how the prisoners "left behind a note with a racist drawing." Gio Benitez didn't give the note a label during his report:

GIO BENITEZ (voice-over): Officials say the men were last seen in their adjoining cells at 10:30 pm Friday night for bed check, and reported missing at bed check the following morning at 5:30 am – leaving this note behind – reading, Have a nice day!'

The transcripts of the relevant portions of NBC's coverage of the prison break from Sunday and Monday's Today, and Sunday's NBC Nightly News; along with the relevant portion of Don Dahler's report from Monday's CBS This Morning:

06/07/2015
08:11 am EDT
NBC – Today

JOHN YANG: Now, all sorts of complicating factors in this search: we're in the middle of the Adirondack Mountains – thick forests around; just to the west is an Indian reservation with its own sovereignty; twenty-five miles north: the Canadian border. Before they left, the two convicted killers left a note for officials – urging them to 'have a nice day.'


06/07/2015
NBC
NBC Nightly News

JOHN YANG (voice-over): They left behind a racially-offensive Post-it note – reading, 'Have a nice day!'

06/08/2015
07:03 am EDT
NBC – Today

MIGUEL ALMAGUER (voice-over): He [New York Governor Andrew Cuomo] says the prisoners, in side-by-side cells, stuffed their bunks with clothes to avoid detection. They cut holes through the steel wall behind their beds; crawled onto this catwalk six stories up; broke through a brick wall two feet thick; cutting holes into and out of a 24-inch steam pipe; shimmying beneath the prison wall; then breaking out of a manhole more than a block away. They left behind a Post-it note with a racist image – reading, 'Have a nice day!'


06/08/2015
07:04 am EDT
CBS This Morning

DON DAHLER (voice-over): Sometime before 5:30 am Saturday, investigators say the two escaped their adjourning cells through holes they cut using power tools. They then broke through a brick wall, climbed onto a six-story-high catwalk, and made their way into a steam pipe – weaving through a complex series of tunnels. They left behind a note with a racist drawing and the words, 'Have a nice day!' Authorities say the two emerged from a manhole three blocks away from 150 year old prison.

CyberAlerts
Censorship
Crime
Labeling
Race Issues
Racism
ABC
Good Morning America
CBS
CBS This Morning
NBC
NBC Nightly News
Today
Video
Don Dahler
Gio Benitez
Miguel Almaguer
John Yang

Source URL: http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-balan/2015/06/08/nbc-airs-then-repeatedly-censors-racist-image-left-escapees