While much of the frenzy has centered on Zimmerman’s past run-ins with police and on Martin’s musings and photos posted to Twitter and MySpace, the avalanche of coverage has been unable to resolve the most critical unknowns: Who instigated the final confrontation? Did Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain, have good reason to feel he was in danger? Did local police handle the case evenhandedly?
Past experience – for example, in the 1991 Rodney King beating – has demonstrated that facts aren’t easily agreed to when cases take on a racial tinge. Opinions and preconceptions have even greater currency in an era of 24-hour news and social networking.
And then the news media does something boneheaded like this:
[url=http://xfinity.comcast.net/blogs/tv/2012/04/01/furor-over-edited-trayvon-911-tape-spurs-internal-nbc-probe/]Furor Over Edited Trayvon 911 Tape Spurs Internal NBC Probe[/url]
Nothing like adding fuel to the fire.
#1: It wasn’t boneheaded. It was intentional. Just like continuing to use photos of Trayvon as a 10 year old and claiming a young boy was killed, when in fact Trayvon was a football player almost a half foot taller than Zimmerman.
I became aware of this problem after the Rodney King incident. A relative, who was a deputy sherifff, got to watch the WHOLE tape of the “beating” (not just the part shown on the news). the missing part showed King (apparently on PCP) throwing a large deputy over the patrol car. That certainly made more understandable the level of force that followed. Sad that the media was so deceptive.
I’m witing for all the facts to come out here.
The Press needs to be ashamed of its self, in particular NPR. They have led in the race to judgment before all the facts were known. They acted more as propagandists for race baiters of all stripes and colors.
As for the professional raciests like Sharpton, we expect that from them, but the press should call them on it, not carry water for them.
All tax monies should be removed from NPR.
While we wait for all the facts to come out of the official state investigation, so many stories have been circulated, quite a number of them false or deliberately misleading, that a fair trial for Zimmerman, if he’s charged with anything, will be nearly impossible. Cool-headed legal analysts seem to think that some sort of manslaughter is a possible charge, if any, but after all this uproar either manslaughter or no charges will be greeted with even more fury. This lynch mob mentality does nothing to further actual justice.