Fox station edited video of Eric Garner protesters to make it sound like they were chanting 'kill a cop'
Tawanda Jones was misreported in a Fox video as having chanted 'kill a cop'
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Your support makes all the difference.Fox has apologised after editing a video of protesters to make it sound as if they were chanting "kill a cop" during a demonstration over a grand jury decision not to charge the police officer who put Eric Garner in an illegal chokehold.
Protesters, led by Tawanda Jones, took to the streets of Washington DC earlier this month to campaign against the Grand Jury decision. The father-of-six died shortly after insisting “I can’t breathe”.
In the unedited footage, people could be heard chanting “we won’t stop, we can’t stop, until killer cops are in cell blocks.”
However, in the version altered by Fox and broadcast by the Baltimore-based affiliated channel Fox45, the chanting was cut down to wrongly portray Ms Jones and others as having said “we won’t stop, we can’t stop, so kill a cop.”
The real footage, that was broadcast on C-Span, backs Ms Jones’ claim that Fox misrepresented her and the other protesters to cast the event in a negative light.
Ms Jones, sister of Tyrone West who died in police custody in July last year, yesterday appeared in a tearful interview with the channel after she complained about their false representation of the protest and the tarnishing of her reputation while she fought for justice of those who have died in similar circumstances of corruption.
She said: “What really gets to me is where you edited it and stopped. Like, how could that be a mistake?”
The blunder made by Fox45 follows the death of two NYPD police officers, Rafael Ramos and Liu Wenjin, who were shot dead by gunman Ismaaiyl Brinsley while sitting in a police patrol car on Saturday afternoon.
“My community needs the cops. Nobody deserves to be brutally murdered, so that hurt me,” Ms Jones continued in explaining that the real version of the chant actually meant that she believes everyone should be held accountable for their actions.
Ms Jones said that she complained to Fox after her ex-partner, a police officer himself, had alerted her to the gross misrepresentation that was being shown across the US and also worldwide.
She is one of the many people who protest every week on what is dubbed as “West Wednesday” to campaign along the east coast of the country against the circumstances in which her brother died and also for other victims including Anthony Anderson and Michael Brown.
“You say you were misrepresented in that video, and you were, we apologise for it,” said the Fox interviewer.
After the apology, she said that the misreporting of the story had made her too afraid to go out in public.
She said: “I still don’t feel safe because the message is still out there. I don’t break the law, I live by the law, I’m a school teacher and I’m a mother and I fight for justice for the right cause.”
“I feel like I was murdered all over again. A piece of me died when my brother was brutally murdered.
“You guys just killed a little piece of me because I never thought my name would be in a negative light,” she added.
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