If the following article is accurate, then the main stream media is guilty of gross negligence in the reporting of the death of Trayvon Martin.
Unfortunately, the usual suspects, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, rushed for a microphone in a desperate attempt to exploit what appeared to be a racist incident. Even President Obama weighed in on the controversy. We were told by everyone, including Fox News, that an angry white male shot an innocent black teenager for no reason. At a minimum, there was a lot more to the story.
A few years ago one of our neighbors shot someone to death just around the corner from our home. This was an upscale gated community. We were shocked. What happened is that another neighbor had a nephew visiting who got hopped up on PCP. This guy started to stab his uncle while in the house, but the uncle ran outside trying to escape. His nephew followed him and continued to stab him in the middle of the street. The uncle’s wife yelled from the front porch for help. Help came—from their next door neighbor–with a gun in hand. He fired a warning shot and then shot the young man, high on PCP, killing him. (Unfortunately, the uncle died, as well.)
The first thing the cops did when they arrived was to arrest the neighbor who did the shooting. Earth to liberals: Even in places like Sanford, Florida, if the police arrive and find a dead person and someone else with a gun, the person with the gun usually gets arrested. At a minimum, he gets handcuffed and asked a lot of tough questions. Our neighbor was taken to the police station, but was released because it was an obvious case of self-defense; in fact, the police noted that with the act of shooting the nephew, it was highly possible that more lives were saved.
In the Trayvon case, it is becoming really obvious why the police didn’t arrest George Zimmerman. He had a broken nose, his back was soaked from the ground, and he had cuts and bruises on the back of his head where Trayvon Martin was slamming his head against the ground. It is entirely possible that if Zimmerman was not armed, he would be dead.
But the truth is never a barrier to a run-a-way main stream media with a juicy story like this. They are anti-gun and convinced that innocent people are frequently shot by out-of-control and poorly trained amateur gun owners. Add in a hint of racism and they were off to the moon.
Unfortunately, we are likely to see a lot of irresponsible behavior and possibly violence in response to the malpractice by the mainstream media. George Zimmerman is unlikely to be even charged with a crime. If he is charged, he is even more unlikely to be convicted. But, he was already tried and convicted by CNN, ABC, NBC and even Fox News. The Black Panthers even put a bounty on him.
This irresponsible behavior by the media, by Jesse Jackson, by Al Sharpton and particularly by President Obama will do grave damage to race relations in this country. However, I wouldn’t expect a correction or even an admission of error. Instead, they are already off looking for some other situation to exploit.
It is a real tragedy that a 17-year-old black man lost his life. It is also a tragedy that George Zimmerman was assaulted and had to shoot someone in self defense. But the greatest tragedy is the enormous damage done by the rush to judgment by those who could not resist an opportunity to exploit the opportunity to claim racism.
TDM
Just like other events of this nature, the media reports things in a way that best dramatizes the event in the most sensational way possible. We ocassionally hear the first report of an incident with all of the available details, the the editors get ahold of the story and groom it to suit by removing the “essential details” in order to make the story “more interesting”. This is the case re Treyvon Martin vs George Zimmermann. The first report we heard was that Zimmerman called police to report a hooded figure prowling a gated community at 1 AM in the morning. While on the phone with police he challenged the figure and recognized the fact that he did not belong to that community as Zimmermann was a volunteer security patrolman and perportedly new who belonged and who did not. The ensuing combat was recorded via Zimmermann’s cell connection with the police. Although local policy is for the security patrol to only follow til the police arrive, it became a judgement call on the part of Zimmermann as a former police officer,whether or not to engage the subject to verify the situation. A fight for his life then ensued and the Teen subject was shot. The police verified the condition of Zimmermann and took him to the hospital for first aid and a clean up. His subsequent arrest is usual policy in a shooting of this type if the suspect is not an on-duty Officer. Unfortunately the arrest video mis represents his condition as a result of the fight because of his prior clean up. We all hate to see a teen killed in any manner, but if he chooses to prowl in a place where he has no business at a time when he should not be there usually dire consequences will occur. As usual as news gets farther from the source, the details become more and more sketchy