CNN Fesses Up for Editing ‘Burn Down’ Suburbs Quote From Milwaukee Woman to Make Her Sound Peaceful

By now you’ve probably seen the viral video of Sherelle Smith, the sister of an armed man who was killed by Milwaukee police this weekend.

In it, as reported Monday by Independent Journal Review, she calls for rioters to take their burning and looting to the suburbs:

“Burning down sh*t ain’t going to help nothing. Y’all burning down sh*t we need in our community. Take that sh*t to the suburbs. Burn that sh*t down. We need our weave. I don’t wear it, but we need it.”

Watch it below:

Video appears to show the sister of Sylville Smith telling rioters to “take that shit to the suburbs” http://pic.twitter.com/QtqD4O7a2L

— Justin Green (@JGreenDC) August 15, 2016

But what we originally covered as a minor point in the article has become a much larger story.

CNN had the clip, and didn’t use it. As first reported by Independent Journal Review, in footage CNN ran on Monday, they described her as peaceful. That was clearly inaccurate, as she was urging people to “burn” the suburbs:

CNN has the first half of that clip, which they ran with this chyron http://pic.twitter.com/sspHrd5YVU

— Justin Green (@JGreenDC) August 15, 2016

Now the news network is confessing their mistake.

Ana Cabrera, a reporter involved in the story, says they “shorthanded” the quote, and that it was unintentional.

We shorthanded sister’s quote. Unintentionally gave the impression she was calling for peace everywhere. Correction: http://bit.ly/2bzxrEx

— Ana Cabrera (@AnaCabrera) August 16, 2016

The new clip from CNN, rather than painting Smith as calling for peace, includes her saying that violence should be taken out of black communities and into the suburbs.

It also features a slide admitting their error:

It’s a distressingly common trend in the news media to fix mistakes without admitting wrongdoing, and while CNN clearly got this story very wrong, it’s at least nice to see them publicly admitting their error.

But without sharp-eyed citizens spotting that mistake and loudly pointing it out, we might have had yet another narrative that was grounded in “unintentional” mistakes, rather than objective facts.

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Source: independent journal

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