MSNBC is reviewing its portrayal of the testimony of Neil Heslin, the father of a Sandy Hook victim, at a legislative hearing in Hartford on Monday. The 33-second video clip in question, embedded above, features a graphics box saying âMocked and Loaded. Sandy Hook Victimâs Father Heckled by Gun Rights Advocates.â âWeâre reviewing the video in question,â says an MSNBC source. Smart move, considering that Heslin wasnât, in fact, heckled. Audience members merely answered a challenge that Heslin posed from the microphone. Hereâs a transcript of how things unfolded: Heslin: I donât know how many people have young children or children. But just try putting yourself in the place that Iâm in or these other parents that are here. Having a child that you lost. Itâs not a good feeling; not a good feeling to look at your child laying in a casket or looking at your child with a bullet wound to the forehead. I ask if thereâs anybody in this room that can give me one reason or challenge this question: Why anybody in this room needs to have an, one of these assault-style weapons or military weapons or high-capacity clipsâ¦..Not one person can answer that question.â Crowd/Alleged Hecklers: âSecond Amendment shall not be infringedâ Public official: âPlease no comments while Mr. Heslin is speaking. Or weâll clear the room. Mr. Heslin, please continue.â That transcript comes from a look at the sessionâs full, 17-minute video, which is below. MSNBC excerpted a short bite that starts with Heslin saying, âWhy anybody in this roomâ¦â and ends with the appeal from officialdom to âclear the room.â Accordingly, it skips over Heslinâs initial challenge to the public seated behind him: âI ask if thereâs anybody in this room that can give me one reason or challenge this questionâ¦â Those 18 words of context are crucial to the alleged heckling. They show that Heslin made a pointed attempt to rope in members of the Hartford crowd. His was apparently not an idle or rhetorical question. MSNBCâs Lawrence OâDonnell votes in favor of the âhecklingâ interpretation. He said on last nightâs show, âHecklingâs when you say something stupid from the audience. And when a speaker rhetorically or directly asks an audience why you need 30-round magazines and assault weapons, and you yell a response which is basically âI think the Second Amendment says I can have them,â you have not answered the question about why you need them.â Clever thing that OâDonnell has done here â redefine the term âhecklingâ to apply narrowly to what happened in that hearing room. In doing so, he bypasses a more common definition, one that doesnât help his case quite as much. Another consideration that doesnât help his case too much: Heslinâs reflections on the moment. In a chat last night on CNN with Piers Morgan, Heslin reports that he wasnât âfazedâ by the episode. âIt wasnât the answer to my question. It was a response,â he said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2013/01/30/msnbc-reviewing-newtown-heckled-video/
Heads should roll at BSNBC if they ever want to be anything other than the laughing stock of cable news.