Lilia Luciano, a Miami-based NBC News correspondent, is no longer working for the network, TVNewser has learned.

Luciano last reported for NBC News March 31. Until that point, she had been reporting mainly on the Trayvon Martin story. Sources tell TVNewser Luciano’s dismissal came after an investigation which also led to the firing of a seasoned NBC News producer over a similar, misleading edit. In a story for the “Today” show on March 20, Luciano used part of the George Zimmerman 911 call in which an entire phrase (italicized below) was taken from a later part of the conversation:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good or on drugs or something. He’s got his hand in his waistband. And he’s a black male.
Dispatcher: Are you following him?
Zimmerman: Yeah.
Dispatcher: Okay, we don’t need you to do that.

A week later, on March 27, another correspondent, Ron Allen used similar audio from that 911 call in his story, leaving out the dispatcher’s follow-up question.

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.

As we’ve reported, here’s how the conversation actually happened:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.
Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he white, black, or Hispanic?
Zimmerman: He looks black.

That edit resulted in the dismissal of the NBC News Miami producer. NBC News confirms with TVNewser that Luciano is no longer with the network. She joined NBC News from Univision just 18 months ago.

Luciano is the third NBC employee to have lost their job over this story. As TVSpy reported last week, WTVJ reporter Jeff Burnside was fired for a similar circumstance.

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After Newt Gingrich formally suspended his Presidential campaign this afternoon, Fox news Channel’s Shepard Smith read a statement from the Romney campaign, praising the man it had hurled insults at just a  few weeks before.

“Politics is weird, and creepy, and now I know lacks even the loosest attachment to anything like reality,” Smith quipped after reading the statement.

Video via BuzzFeed

The Wall Street Journal‘s Keach Hagey looks at CNN’s ratings woes, and provides some new context and information relating to the news channel. Among the revelations: Former Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons allegedly wanted CNN Worldwide president Jim Walton removed from his post.

Also: the current leadership of Time Warner, led by CEO Jeff Bewkes, are not taking CNN’s struggles lying down.

Time Warner’s current CEO, Jeff Bewkes, is “clearly not satisfied” with how CNN is doing and is pushing management of both CNN and Turner “to come up with a plan to restore momentum” of CNN, said a Time Warner spokesman.

“I’ve been here for a long time. And I enjoy what I do, and I compete and I plan to keep doing it for a while,” Mr. Walton said in an interview.

Read the entire WSJ item here.

The New York Times‘ Brian Stelter has more information, including that CNN wants to add an 11 PM program, but that existing programming will likely take top priority.

25-54 demographic (Live +SD)

• Total day: FNC: 320 | MSNBC: 133 | CNN: 108 | HLN: 83

• Primetime: FNC: 413 | MSNBC: 260 | CNN: 167 | HLN: 99

	5p:	6p:	7p:	8p:	9p:	10p:	11p:	12a:
FNC	TheFive:	Baier:	Shep/Obama:	O’Reilly:	Hannity:	Greta:	O’Reilly:	Hannity:
	362	323	329	486	411	344	390	332
MSNBC	Matthews:	Sharpton:	Matthews/Obama:	EdShow:	Maddow:	O’Donnell:	EdShow:	Maddow:
	124	137	161	179	333	265	153	129
CNN	Blitzer:	SpecialRpt:	SpecialRpt/Obama:	Cooper:	Morgan:	Cooper:	Burnett:	Morgan:
	92	90	152	169	138	194	84	66
HLN	Special:	Prime:	VelezMitchell:	Grace:	DrDrew:	Grace:	Showbiz:	DrDrew:
	57	59	109	121	93	90	60	54

Read more

Breaking: Comcast subscribers should expect to see Bloomberg TV next to Fox News, CNN and CNBC in the coming weeks.

The FCC has found in Bloomberg’s favor in its long-running complaint with Comcast. In case you aren’t up to speed: Bloomberg argued to the FCC that–as part of its deal to acquire NBCUniversal– Comcast promised to place “independent” news networks in the same channel “neighborhoods” as the major TV news channels.

Today, the FCC said that yes, Comcast must place Bloomberg TV in the same neighborhoods as its competitors like CNBC and Fox Business, as well as general news channels like CNN or Fox News (read the full FCC decision after the jump). If a Comcast region has multiple news “neighborhoods,” then Bloomberg must be placed in one of them.

Comcast says it “respectfully disagree[s]” with the decision, and that it will immediately file an appeal. Comcast’s full statement is after the jump.

Theoretically, the decision could open the floodgates for lawsuits from other independent programmers such as Current TV, Al Jazeera or BBC World News, which will argue that they too deserve to be placed in those neighborhoods.  FBN and similar networks would not be eligible because they are associated with larger media companies. The FCC attempted to somewhat undercut potential lawsuits by strictly defining a news channel as such in the decision:

Based on the definition of “independent news channel”58 and the phrasing of the news neighborhooding condition, we conclude that the term “news channels,” as used in the condition, refers to channels whose programming during the hours from 6:00 a.m. to 4 p.m. is focused on reporting and analysis relating to public affairs or local affairs of general interest or relating to business.

That would seem to exclude Current TV, at least for now, though Current is expected to ramp up its original dayside programming in the next few months.

Either way, this decision is a big, big deal.

Read more

While CBS News president David Rhodes (right) attended the memorial service for Mike Wallace Tuesday, seated next to presidential candidate Mitt Romney, his brother, Ben Rhodes was on his way to Afghanistan, seated next to — or at least near — Pres. Obama. Ben Rhodes is a deputy national security adviser in the administration and was on the trip to Bagram Air Field yesterday.

A year ago Tuesday, David Rhodes was at CBS News headquarters heading up the coverage of the death of Osama Bin Laden, while his younger brother was at the White House supporting the administration’s part in the raid that took out Bin Laden.

Jim Lampley has spent his 38-year career calling and commentating on just about every sport imaginable for ABC, CBS, NBC and now HBO. But the four-time Sports Emmy Award winner has also dabbled in political commentary, as we find out in today’s mediabistro.com “So What Do You Do?” feature:

In 2005, you used an incorrect source when blogging about the Iraq war for Huffington Post, and many readers called you out for it. How did that situation affect you?

I didn’t think of it as rebounding. At the end of the day, if people want to disagree with what I say, that’s certainly part of the process and their privilege. I read my political commentaries and, over time, I decided that I was not as well versed and deeply based as a political commentator as I am a sports commentator. I had been persuaded to do it by someone very high up in political media who has specific purpose in mind for me, and at the end of the day I decided I wasn’t interested in that purpose. That was the beginning and end of that.

Lampley has also filled in, in the past, for Ed Schultz on his radio show. Lampley will be calling Saturday’s HBO pay-per-view fight between Floyd Mayweather and Miguel Cotto.

A small contingent of reporters accompanied President Obama on his surprise trip to Afghanistan yesterday. The trip’s pool report, filed Josh Gerstein of Politico, says that pool members were briefed on the trip Sunday “on an off-the-record basis with the customary tell-only-one-editor rule.”

Pool reporters were assembled at Andrews Air Force Base late Monday evening. “It was a scene from a spy novel,” pool producer Richard Coolidge of ABC News writes:

A little after 9:30 p.m. ET, I arrived at a back gate of Joint Base Andrews.  No guard or intercom, I just drove up and it opened. I was in. The security guards verified my identity and I made my way to the rendezvous point. Typically, I would meet traveling White House press aides at the base passenger terminal, but not tonight. Very few people knew what we were doing there, so we met in a dimly lit parking lot.

Our bags were screened and we gave up all our electronics — laptops, mobile phones, cameras, anything that might have tracking software — and put them into bins. Read more

The Fox News “mole” Joe Muto is making the next logical step after losing his producing gig at the network: writing a tell-all memoir. According to the New York Observer‘s Kat Stoeffel, Muto is shopping the book (tentatively titled An Atheist in the Foxhole) with the promise of salacious details from his tenure at FNC, including gossip related to Bill O’Reilly:

Unlike MediaMatters.org’s straight-faced The Fox Effect and Gabriel Sherman’s forthcoming (and reportedly deeply reported) The Loudest Voice in the Room, Mr. Muto’s book is pitched as a How to Lose Friends and Alienate People-style industry memoir in a Dave Barry/David Sedaris tone. The proposal outlines chapters devoted to the “cheapness and stinginess” of Fox News (“cannot be overstated”), Mr. O’Reilly’s morning ritual (“lots of yelling”) and—“in what’s certain to be the most talked about chapter of the book”—the 2004 sexual harassment suit filed against Mr. O’Reilly.

More from the Observer, here.

Just a week after playing the role of Chet Huntley in a live episode of “30 Rock,” Alec Baldwin was back at the anchor desk last night, jumping in for Lawrence O’Donnell during a guest appearance on MSNBC’s “The Last Word.”

“Alec Baldwin is here and I’m telling you, I have no idea when he will seize the microphone next,” O’Donnell joked. “Anything could happen.” WATCH: