20 thoughts on “What Did The Media Get Wrong In The Trayvon Martin Case?”

  1. You have to look at things from a different perspective.

    Some wag on another forum commented that the Supreme Court overturning Health Care Reform is a done deal — otherwise the President wouldn’t be so agitated about the subject as of late.

    Before I engage in what some might regard as snark at the subject, I want to express the opinion that this matter is a tragedy all around. A young man is dead and a family is in sorrow. Another not-that-old-man is in hiding from vigilante justice and his life is perhaps ruined on account of actions he had taken.

    OK, I gingerly engaged a family member in South Florida who, let us just say, has a more direct connection to the Liberal Party Line than I. I tried suggesting that what Mr. Zimmerman did as a neighborhood watch person may have been bone-headed and his following around of Mr. Martin may have provoked a confrontation because Mr. Martin may have thought Mr. Zimmerman was some creep instead of the Neighborhood Watch person acting as Mr. Junior G-Man. I qualified this claim as “what they are saying on the right-wing Web pages”, but I asserted that at the time Mr. Martin was shot, Mr. Zimmerman “was getting stomped” and hence not in a position “to flee to avoid having to use his gun.”

    This attempt at diplomacy with the Liberal Community provoked this stern admonition “Oh, no one knows what happened in the last 30 seconds! Both the Left and the Right may end up with egg on their face for making a rush to judgement on the last 30 seconds! You have a point a view (from reading right-wing Web pages), but you better not say anything about the last 30 seconds, because you don’t know! You may end up with egg on your face!”

    As I was saying, my family member is not, perhaps, an irredeemable Liberal, even if he is represented in Congress by the most outspokenly liberal member of the Democratic Party Caucus now that Weiner and Grayson are out. But given his workplace, social, demographic, and geographic ties, he is a pretty reliable source of the Liberal Talking Points on all of the controversial issues.

    If the Liberal Establishment were confident about the Zimmerman case fitting into the narrative of “Southern white man murders black teen and racist establishment turns a blind eye”, my informant would say something like, “Oh yeah, that man just tracked down and shot that child!”, but my informant is not saying that. He is saying stuff like “Both the right and the left wing shouldn’t rush to judgement on this” which is as close to him ever saying, “You know, this is turning into a media circus that is going to embarrass the Left.”

    My informant brought up “the acoustic evidence on the screams”, I brought up “who needs acoustic evidence when there were witnesses” which was followed by a stern scolding “you will end up with egg on your face if you rush to judgement!” I happen to know something about the acoustic analysis of speech, and if this case hinges on acoustic evidence, the Liberal Left is grasping at straws right now to save face regarding their snap judgements.

    Paraphrasing William Shakespeare, the Liberal Left dost protest too much, which as with the mother of Hamlet, is as much an admission you are going to get from them that they got this completely wrong.

    1. OK, I gingerly engaged a family member in South Florida who, let us just say, has a more direct connection to the Liberal Party Line than I.

      Well, god bless you, Paul. As the white sheep of the family, I don’t even bother. I never bring anything up. The kinship of family, friends — hell, random people walking their dog up the street isn’t worth it, not to me. I’ll leave that to the professional wordsmiths.

      However, I did have an acquaintance last week who was trolling, “you better not have Skittles and iced tea or you might get shot!” so our experiences were similar none-the-less.

  2. The media screwed up only if you assume their goal is to accurately report the news. That is not the case. This is race-baiting to firm up Obama’s minority support and tar all his critics with the “racist” smear. When you accept that as the goal, the coverage of this story has been flawless.

          1. That one is funny on a couple levels.

            Be careful sneaking things past the filter, you can break the comments section.

    2. Since at least the time of the Duke Lacrosse Team farce and likely further back (probably predating the 2004 Dan Rather’s forged Air National Guard memo case), we’ve been exposed to “the narrative” as a form of journalism. Instead of just relaying the facts as known about any given incident, so-called journalists are using the narrative technique to tell us what they want us to believe. Not so coincidentally, the given narrative about any particular incident just happens to be from the the liberal perspective.

      In the National Guard memo case, the narrative was that Bush 43 used family connections to shirk his duty as shown in the forged memos. That’s when we were told that the memos were “fake but accurate”, meaning that while the memos were forgeries, they were in line with the narrative so we should believe them anyway.

      In the Duke Lacrosse Team incident, the narrative was of priviledged white athletes at a southern university mistreating a poor black woman. When it turned out that the story wasn’t true, we learned that “the narrative was right but the facts were wrong.”

      In the Zimmerman/Martin case, the narrative was of a racist southern white man (no doubt a Republican) profiling and shooting an unarmed black teenager and the police doing nothing about it. Only Zimmerman is a hispanic Democrat and there are holes in the story. There are still things we don’t know and may never know, such as what happened when they immediately came in contact. Reports indicate that Martin told his girlfriend that he was being followed. When Zimmerman got out of his car, he escalated the incident. Did Martin think he was being attacked? Did he act in self-defense? Because he was killed and there don’t seem to be any witnesses of the initial confrontation, we may never know exactly what happened. Zimmerman has told his side of the story and Martin is unavailable for comment. Like Paul said above, both sides are rushing to judgment based in incomplete and sometimes contradictory news accounts. Once again, the MSM is showing itself to be an ass.

  3. I was with some friends last week and broke into their rant about racists, whites, and guns to interject an admission that I was relieved that the incedent didn’t involve any white people (precisly because of what they were saying).

    One of my friends replied, “what do you mean he isn’t white?” This was while looking at the pictures online. Apparently the narrative is stronger than looking at a picture.

    1. You should’ve confused them by pointing out that thinking you can identify someone’s language group from a picture is racist, and challenge them to identify the Hispanics in randomized photos of Spaniards, Brazilians, Cubans, Mexicans, and Italians.

      Depending on the government agency, Spaniards, Portaguese, and Brazilians may or may not be classified as Hispanic.

  5. I’m not so much worried about the ongoing BS that the Big 3 TV news and MSM in general pushes at us. I don’t like that they do it, I hardly if ever watch or read them. But what kills me is the subtle changes they’re making at FOX.

    This story alone has been so under reported that it’s nonsensical.

    They’ve not reported on the way the other services have worked this story. It’s as if they are being run by the RNC. Using that old system of even if you’re ahead, don’t push too hard.

    Having said that, the country is in desperate need of a news media that will hold ALL politicians feet to the fire. Regardless of the (R) or (D) behind their name. Regardless of what state they are from. I just don’t see it happening, like many other changes the country needs, short of some sort of collapse or major shake up, internal war or the dreaded Zombie Apocalypse.

    We can’t afford to keep going like this, with people like Obama et al, the helm and the media kissing his / their @$$, while simultaneously whizzing down our collective collars, telling us it’s sunshine. We need to be informed and ‘old’ media isn’t doing it.

    Every time I find the true story of anything online, where I can research and see what the truth really is apart from the propaganda, I thank Al Gore for inventing the internet.

    1. “Having said that, the country is in desperate need of a news media that will hold ALL politicians feet to the fire. “

      I’d frankly like just one channel dedicated to -just- laughing at ‘the other guys’.

      That is, investigate the press reporting of everything.

      They handle mocking -poorly-.

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