Media bias and lazy thinking: What America should learn

Sorry - I was referring to the initial outrage. At the time - it's probably at the very beginning of the other thread - a lot of things came out about other past race controversiers with the Sanford PD. So when the initial investigation was lacking (leaving TM in the morgue without trying to ID him despite him having a cell phone, being reported missing, etc), there was a lot of initial skepticism about the reasons for that.

Doing a google search, here's a bit of sampling:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/trayvon-martin-sanford-racial-history


It may come as no surprise, then, that law and order in Sanford in recent years has been plagued by allegations of racial injustice, and a series of public missteps involving its police department. In 2006 two private security guards—one the son of a Sanford police officer, the other a volunteer for the department—killed a black teen with a gunshot in his back. Even though they admitted to never identifying themselves, the guards were released without charges. Then, in 2010, Justin Collison, the son of a Sanford PD lieutenant, sucker-punched a homeless black man outside a bar, and officers on the scene released Collison without charges. He eventually surrendered after video of the incident materialized online; the police chief at the time was ultimately forced into retirement. "Bottom line, we didn't do our job that night," a police department representative told local news station WFTV of the incident.

As it would turn out, the Sanford patrol sergeant in charge on the night of Collison's assault, Anthony Raimondo, would also be the first supervisor on the scene of Trayvon Martin's shooting death.

 

Good article on Space Ghost's point - written by a conservative sort of bashing conservatives. Similar one could be written by a liberal bashing liberals.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/george-zimmerman-trial-expands-deep-divide-94125.html?hp=l1

George Zimmerman trial expands deep divide


The Trayvon Martin case highlights more than the flaws of Florida law or the inadequacies of courtroom justice. It also paints in vivid display the vulgar state of American political culture.

Within seconds of Saturday night’s verdict exonerating George Zimmerman, liberals and conservatives scurried to their shabby political corners and began tweeting hyperbolic political pronouncements on a judicial process that few of them knew anything about.

Liberals launched anguished attacks against George Zimmerman, the state of Florida, stand-your-ground laws, the gun culture, and the current state of racial relations in America in under 140 characters. Some conservatives used the opportunity to gloat and continue their attacks against Al Sharpton, the national media, racial politics, American liberalism, and a dead teenager.

The entire spectacle was repulsive.

The Zimmerman verdict showed just how politicized every speck of American life has become for a hyper-partisan political class that has little in common with most Americans. In fact, they are probably why most Americans hate politics.

How exactly was it that liberals and conservatives could so neatly line up on opposite sides of a troubling courtroom trial involving a Hispanic man and an African-American teenager?

And how could one side unanimously proclaim the verdict a victory for courtroom justice while the other side immediately declared the verdict a defeat for racial tolerance?

There has to be a liberal somewhere in America (who is paid to express his viewpoints) who understands that the prosecution had a difficult burden to carry in the trial, just as there must be a conservative who is deeply troubled by the of events of this case.

If it seems like I am taking a removed, middle-ground approach on this trial, let me assure you that I am not.

I am angry that George Zimmerman could chase a teenager through his neighborhood, ignore a dispatcher’s pleas, make racially charged statements, provoke a confrontation with a young man armed only with Skittles, and pull the trigger that ended that teenager’s life, only to walk away without as much as a misdemeanor attached to his name. But I also know that the laws of Florida favored the defense, that the prosecution overreached in its efforts to convict Zimmerman on a second-degree murder charge, and that we will never know which man was screaming for help in the moments that George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. I also know that it is a fool’s errand to second-guess the conclusions of a jury that sat through countless hours of testimony and evidence before reaching a verdict.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t draw my own personal conclusions, like my belief that George Zimmerman is a racist idiot who chased an unarmed teenager through a neighborhood for little reason more than he was a black man wearing a hoodie. I can also conclude that many conservative commentators were offensive in their reflexive defense of Zimmerman, as well as their efforts to attack the integrity of a dead black teenager. I am also not sure how it is that the right-wing’s professional chattering classes usually find themselves on the other side of African-Americans in racially sensitive cases.

I do not remotely suggest that all conservatives opposed Zimmerman’s trial. The National Review’s Rich Lowry agreed with a handful of conservatives like myself that Trayvon Martin’s killer should be tried in a court of law. But I remained confused by a political party that desperately tries to expand its minority outreach by considering the granting of citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants while refusing to even give the benefit of the doubt to a young black man gunned down for no good reason in a suburban Florida neighborhood. I just don’t get it.

What I do get is why over 90 percent of African American voters have been voting against GOP presidential candidates for most of my life. Conservative commentary and GOP stand-your-ground laws only exacerbated that divide. If Republicans are to take back the White House anytime in the next generation, that reality has to change. After this week, it has definitely become a longer, harder slog.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/...-expands-deep-divide-94125.html#ixzz2Z3sXCIaq

 

Texxx, I agree with you 100%.

What I think you are overlooking in my opinion is that this "national outrage" has really been limited to exactly what you are talking about, a tweet and some protest. As far as I have heard, there hasn't been much outrage after the fact and I think that people do genuinely have the right to be upset, even if their anger stems from a biased portrayal of TM, a clearly trouble youth. These people are still the minority (not minorities) and I take the approach that anything will have people reacting in an extremely dumb way (see: youtube comments, espn message boards).

The media did not do this for TM, they did it for hits and viewers. They do not care about the backlash. They simply do it for themselves and whatever people make of it really has no effect on their credibility. I was too young to remember the OJ case but what was that like after he was acquitted?

 

LOL.

You post about media bias & lazy thinking.
He posts about you falling into that category of bias.
You quote a portion of his post, remove context for the statement, and write some lazy comment to manipulate/invalidate his intended meaning.

Just found that amuzing. Continue cherry picking weak arguments & subverting all reasonable opposing views.

 

This is an excellent thread. The news media and the Crumptards ran a joint operation full of outright lies, half-truths, and innuendos.

 

Boy, that was the single biggest racial divide in America since desegregation. With some exceptions, as always, it seemed as if all whites thought he was guilty and all blacks thought he was innocent (at least at the time).

Not even this trial and event divided people as much as the OJ case and I can remember white people crying while many blacks celebrated like their favorite sports team won the championship.

 

I thought Zimmerman profiled Trayvon Martin and likely killed him because of it. It was a tragedy that could've easily been avoided if not for such racial profiling. I think he should be responsible for escalating something into a death, and thus should be in jail for... something. I don't know what, though, as I don't know the legal buzzwords for various charges.

That said, I'm not bothered by the verdict at all. With all the evidence available to use now, there is indeed reasonable doubt as to what happened, so I totally see the reasoning for acquittal. The same was true of the Casey Anthony trial, another unreasonably popular trial that was built up purely by the media. Sure, I think she killed her child, but there was reasonable doubt, so I don't mind the acquittal, either.

The legal system did its job. It did what it's supposed to, whether some people like it or not.

What pisses me off, however, is when the legal system is completely ignored. See Bradley Manning. See Guantanamo Bay. See the NSA intercepting and storing everyone's communication without warrant, ignoring the fourth amendment. THAT'S what pisses me off. That's circumventing the judicial system. That's circumventing/ignoring law.

What annoys me about these trials is how much of a distraction they are from things that are much more important. People kill people all the damn time; why do we fixate on one particular murder? I guarantee there are similar murders that get zero media attention.

&%$# the current media culture. They're focusing on Edward Snowden the person, rather than what he's revealed. The media has become a parroting arm for the government, for the most part. No longer is there hard investigative journalism, but instead sound bytes and catchy headlines about celebrities or easy-to-swallow news. I hate CNN, MSNBC, and FoxNews for what they're doing to our society.

/end soapbox rant

 

Regardless of what the media does, you still have to give some blame to various ignorant and lazy members of the public that think they can digest all of their news in 30-1:00 soundbites and headlines on social media and then places like this message board. I already posted the truth behind the Florida mother who went to prison because she supposedly fired warning shots. Too bad most will never see that and some are using a misunderstanding of that story as a reason for why Florida law is biased against blacks.

Not to say I'm just the smartest person living and know everything but some people do amaze me with how much they think they know but don't really know because they don't read and think about things. Then they take their limited knowledge and get in a rage over a misunderstanding. Now based on my posts in the TM thread last night, do I need to post a disclaimer or what?

 

It went something like this:

 

In the words of Immortal Technique, media is the 4th branch of government.

jkjk...kind of.