Some excerpts (without links):

Today’s December 6 broadcast of NBC’s Today Show, the highest rated morning news show in the country, featured the newly discovered Mumia Abu-Jamal / Daniel Faulkner crime scene photos taken by press photographer Pedro P. Polakoff. The photos had been completely ignored by the mainstream media (only published by The SF Bay View), until a Dec. 4 Reuters article reported on a press conference in Philadelphia where the photos were presented by several prominent journalists, along with other evidence of both an unfair trial and innocence, as was also reported by The Black Commentator.

The photos were presented on the Today Show segment featuring Michael Smerconish and Maureen Faulkner, marking the release of their new book titled “Murdered by Mumia.” The show followed a massive media-activist campaign that was launched weeks before by supporters of Abu-Jamal to “ensure fairness” on the Dec. 6 program. A large group of Mumia supporters gathered outside the show, and passed out flyers challenging the statement made at the “Murdered by Mumia” website that he “was unanimously convicted of the crime by a racially mixed jury based on: the testimony of several eyewitnesses, his ownership of the murder weapon, matching ballistics, and Abu-Jamal’s own confession.”

As the report progressed, it became clear that this was not the typical report from the mainstream media, as expressed in several ways:

1. NBC honestly reported how Abu-Jamal remains in his death-row cell despite the 2001 federal court decision overturning the death penalty.

2. The recognition that “to this day he maintains his innocence” was atypical. Often coverage repeats as fact, the false claim that Mumia has never proclaimed his innocence.

3. The footage of various demonstrations and supporters for Mumia was fairly extensive, and not presented in a demeaning way (as is usually done with labels like “Hollywood Chic,” which serve to trivialize supporters as ignorant or naive dupes. They recognize that Mumia does have strong support around the word, and there is footage of Pam Africa, coordinator of Mumia’s international support network (ICFFMAJ), speaking at a demonstration: “It’s a righteous cause. That’s why you see people here from Belgium, France, Germany, and South Africa.”

At this point, Matt Lauer brings up the new evidence: “There are some photographs that have been released by supporters of Mumia, and they were taken by a freelancer named Pedro Polakoff. The supporters say that these photos show a policeman holding two guns in his bare hand, contradicting the officer’s trial testimony that he had preserved ballistics evidence. Another shows you husband’s hat on top of a car, and not on the sidewalk as it is in the official police photo of the crime scene. A third shows a blood-stained sidewalk where the shooting took place, but does not show any signs of the marks in the concrete that might have occurred if your husband had been shot from above as prosecutors contended. The defense attorney says that he can ‘have a field day’ with these photographs if a new trial…”

Cutting off Lauer, Smerconish makes no attempts to challenge any of these stated facts. He says “This is the outrage. For 26 years, these canards have enabled the manipulation of the process. It’s as reliable as the fact that Christmas is on the 25th of December, that they will come up with something every year. One year it was a guy who stood up and said, ‘I know who murdered Danny Faulkner–I did it,’ and the defense lawyers thought he was preposterous. Another year, there was a guy who said he was there and that the dying words of Danny Faulkner were “get Maureen, get the children,” when everyone agrees that he died instantly, and unfortunately she never had the chance to have children with Danny. Where does it stop?”

For a complete description of the show, see
http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=5100