CNC3 has is­sued an apol­o­gy over the air­ing of a news re­port on Crime Watch host Ian Al­leyne's clash with TV ri­val Roger Alexan­der, in which a brief seg­ment of the video­tape of the in­ci­dent had been cut.

In the seg­ment that was edit­ed out, Al­leyne could be heard swear­ing at Alexan­der, once, briefly.

The did-he-or-didn't-he mat­tered, be­cause Al­leyne charged that Alexan­der had used un­rea­son­able force and was un­jus­ti­fied in phys­i­cal­ly re­mov­ing him from a sus­pect's yard, where he'd gone to shoot a seg­ment for his Crime Watch show. Alexan­der's ac­cu­sa­tion that Al­leyne had used coarse lan­guage was cen­tral to the po­lice­man's de­fence in jus­ti­fy­ing his re­moval of Al­leyne.

Last Fri­day, a news re­port by TV6, on which Alexan­der co-presents his Be­yond The Tape pro­gramme, high­light­ed the ed­it. On Sun­day, the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MATT) weighed in, say­ing that CNC3 had breached jour­nal­is­tic ethics by not in­form­ing the pub­lic that the video had been al­tered.

CNC3 yes­ter­day in­sist­ed that there was no in­ten­tion­al de­cep­tion with the ed­it, and it had been done on the grounds of good taste and de­cen­cy.

"In our de­sire to abide by the pro­vi­sion of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act, we re­moved of­fen­sive ma­te­r­i­al from the video of Mr Al­leyne, which was not law­ful­ly fit to be pub­lished in a news­cast," the CNC3 state­ment read.

"In hind­sight, we recog­nise that we should have al­so pub­licly in­di­cat­ed that an ob­scen­i­ty was used. If any of our view­ers were mis­led, we un­re­served­ly apol­o­gise."

The ac­cu­sa­tions stung jour­nal­ists at a sta­tion which hosts the most-watched TV evening prime time news­cast in T&T, front­ed by some of the most re­spect­ed names in TV jour­nal­ism. CNC3, how­ev­er, de­fend­ed its rep­u­ta­tion for fair and ac­cu­rate re­port­ing.

"Since its in­cep­tion, CNC3 News has al­ways up­held the high­est stan­dards of jour­nal­ism, and we recom­mit our­selves to those," the state­ment be­gan by say­ing.

It added: "We wish to make it clear that at no point did CNC3 in­tend to de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead the pub­lic in our re­port­ing on the ar­rest of Al­leyne."