Unfair reporting on Florida shooting

By Jay Ambrose
Scripps Howard News Service
Fri, 04/06/2012 - 1:15pm

...On broadcasts to millions, NBC played a recording of a police officer's conversation with George Zimmerman the night he shot and killed unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla. Zimmerman was patrolling his neighborhood as a citizen, called the cops, and, according to NBC's version of the conversation, said he had been following someone who "looks like he is up to no good. He looks black."

That's not how the conversation actually went. Zimmerman said there was someone walking around looking "like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something," and the officer on the other end asked, "Is he black, white or Hispanic?" Zimmerman responded that the man looked black.

The unchanged tape is a thousand miles distant from the mangled one, and NBC has said it is sorry for "an error made in the production process." But that is evasive mumbo jumbo. The editing was not a technical issue of production. It was a substantive issue of content, and the "error" happened to fit a thesis of racist homicide while making the network look like a watchdog hero. It seems to me to have been error with a purpose.

Sadly, very, very sadly, this NBC incident is one of many possible examples of an outlandish, rules-be-damned rush to judgment in which reporters and commentators are playing the roles of crazed prosecutor, judge and jury not about to wait for evidence.

According to a news report on findings by the PEW Research Center, news outlets have been paying more attention to this story than any other. For a stretch, the MSNBC cable network spent half its time on it, and one of MSNBC's hosts, longtime racial agitator Al Sharpton, has been leading protests. ABC embarrassed itself somewhat less than NBC when it claimed that a video of Zimmerman showed no signs he had been attacked by Martin. The issue matters because the reason police did not arrest Zimmerman was their believe he was defending himself. ABC was wrong about the video. It checked with forensic experts and changed its story.

Some of the bad journalism has been slightly more subtle, such as the frequent juxtaposition of a photo of an unshaven Zimmerman in a jail uniform next to a photo of Martin as an angelic looking kid. But there has also been journalism of the kind that produced an eyewitness who says he saw 6-foot-2 Martin on top of Zimmerman and that revealed how Martin had been expelled from school three times and was once found in possession of jewelry that was not his. Zimmerman, we have learned, is himself a minority -- his mother is Hispanic -- and has white as well as black family members. Black friends have spoken up for him and he has mentored a black child, although he also has some rough spots in his past.

Full Story standard.net

Media Manipulates America - Tries to Drive a Wedge Between Whites and Blacks

Tex Lahoma
Bluebeerriver
March 27, 2012

Americans are so easily manipulated by the media, it's incredible. Most people can't see through this Trayvon Martin shooting media propaganda. You know why they picked this particular case? Because it wasn't a cop that did the shooting. It was a citizen.

Sure, maybe Zimmerman acted foolishly by following Martin, but if someone were banging my head against the sidewalk, I would make them stop by any means necessary.

I don't blame minorities for being fed up with the way they are treated by the police and the judicial system, racial profiling, longer prison sentences, all that, I'm mostly white and I get it. I could certainly get behind a movement to try to correct it.

But everyone needs to open their eyes and see how they are being led, like a dog on a leash, by the media.

Ask yourself:

"Why this case?"

"BECAUSE IT WASN'T A COP!"

Cops kill innocent people (especially minorities) everyday why aren't people screaming about that?"

Because the media never really gets behind those stories, it would pit the U.S. citizens against the police and government and that's the last thing the controlled media wants.

But, a story like this one tries to pit whites against blacks and could be used as an argument for gun control albeit a ridicules argument. I even saw one pic on the national news where  Zimmerman  had been washed out to make him appear more white and less Hispanic.

This attempt by the media at a race war is quickly falling apart as more details emerge. I'm sure the media manipulators wept when they saw that Zimmerman had some black friends that supported him.

Media whores, don't worry, sooner or later a real racist (that's also not a cop) will shoot a black man and the media can make another run at a race war, divide and conquer.

I just wish people of all colors, including white, could remember, it is we the people against anyone who tries to take away our constitutional rights and freedoms.

UPDATE 3/29/12:



Zimmerman sure doesn't look like he got beat up or had his head beat against a sidewalk. Now I understand why the family wants him to be charged with murder.
I still hope though, that this isn't made into a black verses white thing.

Another Update 3/29/12
www.bob-owens.com

Written By: Bob - Mar• 29•12

The Daily Caller has investigated the ABC News claim that police closed circuit television of George Zimmerman being brought to the Sanford, FL police station, in the news network claims that Zimmerman shows no sign of injury, in what appears to be an intentional effort by the network to cast doubt on Zimmerman’s accounting of events. Zimmerman claims he was forced to shoot high school football player Trayvon Martin after Martin knocked him to the ground and began slamming his head into the ground.
ABC News blatantly lied about what the video showed.

“A police surveillance video taken the night that Trayvon Martin was shot dead shows no blood or bruises on George Zimmerman,” ABC News reporter Matt Gutman wrote, noting that Zimmerman told police “he shot Martin after he was punched in the nose, knocked down and had his head slammed into the ground.”
ABC News reported that Zimmerman appears uninjured in the video. But a still image from the video indicates what appears to be a vertical laceration or scar several inches long.

In fact, not one both both camera views showed that Zimmerman has a laceration several inches long on the back of his head. Any blood had been cleaned up by the Fire Dept assets that had treated Zimmerman at the scene, and bruising would not have shown on the low-resolution video.
More disgusting is the obvious fact that ABC News used a strategically placed chyron (graphic) to cover up the back of Zimmerman’s head for their broadcast, covering up the video that would have disproven their story. View the video at the Daily Caller, and you’ll not that they did not even need a chyron, their was no need to transmit any additional visual data to explain the story.
The only logical reason the chyron exists is to cover-up Zimmerman’s wounds. ABC News doctored the video to sell a false narrative, in a dishonest attempt to brand a man a murderer. I’d be very interested to know if Zimmerman can pursue legal action against ABC for constructing this false narrative.