Posted on 04/26/2012 10:41:46 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
How badly has the media mis-reported the Trayvon Martin shooting? Just look at how rapidly the story is mutating, now that George Zimmerman is up on charges thanks to a ridiculously over-reaching affadavit, for which some observers, including legendary liberal lawyer Alan Dershowitz, think the prosecutor should be up on charges.
Do you remember the story you heard on Day One, when this first became big national news? A racist white man gunned down an innocent little black boy for no reason, just because he was Walking While Black through a swanky gated condo community. The cracker cops of his small Florida town waved this trigger-happy paranoid self-appointed security guard on his merry way.
A million furrowed brows bent over the tape of Zimmermans 911 call, seeking to divine racial epithets from his barely-audible muttering. NBC News deliberately edited out the 911 dispatcher asking Zimmerman to describe the ethnicity of the person he was observing, to make him appear race-obsessed. When the media suddenly discovered what Zimmerman actually looks like, his designation was changed, with nearly one hundred percent consistency, to white Hispanic, by media outlets which had previously employed that designation three or four times in a century, at most.
We saw a thousand reprints of the most infamously disingenuous photographic comparison in recent memory: a shot of 12-year-old Trayvon beaming happily, next to an equally outdated mug shot of a morose George Zimmerman. It took a long time for the media to cough up more recent photos of either one.
And now were finally getting some deep background on Earths most famous white Hispanic. Reuters published a long profile of Zimmerman on Wednesday, and its nothing short of astonishing compared to the image pushed by the media over the past month.
Just for starters, it turns out this allegedly gun-happy nutball got his concealed weapons permit on the advice of an animal control officer, because a pit bull was menacing him and his wife. He was asked to begin neighborhood watch patrols by his community, which a black resident who asked not to be indentified, because she fears retaliation testified was being robbed by young black men.
And Zimmerman was raised in a racially-integrated household, with a family tree that included an Afro-Peruvian great-grandfather. His grandmother baby-sat for two African-American girls who ate their meals at the Zimmerman house and went back and forth to school each day with the Zimmerman children.
George Zimmerman was a Catholic altar boy, volunteered to work in a rectory, helped out at school by translating English to Spanish for immigrant parents, worked three jobs to buy his first car, and opened his own Allstate insurance office with a black partner.
Heres how Reuters describes that posh gated community where Zimmerman supposedly hassled Trayvon Martin for no good reason:
By the summer of 2011, Twin Lakes was experiencing a rash of burglaries and break-ins. Previously a family-friendly, first-time homeowner community, it was devastated by the recession that hit the Florida housing market, and transient renters began to occupy some of the 263 town houses in the complex. Vandalism and occasional drug activity were reported, and home values plunged. One resident who bought his home in 2006 for $250,000 said it was worth $80,000 today.
At least eight burglaries were reported within Twin Lakes in the 14 months prior to the Trayvon Martin shooting, according to the Sanford Police Department. Yet in a series of interviews, Twin Lakes residents said dozens of reports of attempted break-ins and would-be burglars casing homes had created an atmosphere of growing fear in the neighborhood.
In several of the incidents, witnesses identified the suspects to police as young black men. Twin Lakes is about 50 percent white, with an African-American and Hispanic population of about 20 percent each, roughly similar to the surrounding city of Sanford, according to U.S. Census data.
One of the incidents in question involved a black teenager stealing Zimmermans bicycle off his front porch. In another, two black men broke into an occupied house, trapping a woman and her infant son upstairs, whispering frantically to 911 dispatchers. Zimmerman contacted her after the incident, put a stronger lock on her sliding glass door, and told her to contact him or his wife, if she ever felt unsafe again.
Are you getting the picture? Do you see just how badly this story has been mis-reported? Much of this information was readily available to any media organization that cared to request it. I can recall allusions to some of it from early reports in the Florida press, before the story went national, but those details just plain dropped out of the story. Instead, we were told Zimmerman was a hysteric who melted 911 lines with bogus calls.
Even the clear description of his injuries from the police record was called into question. How far do you recall plunging into Trayvon hysteria before you were even aware that Zimmerman was physically assaulted during the encounter? How much further did we get before the media grudgingly admitted this was an undisputed fact?
None of this background information absolves Zimmerman of responsibility for his actions, but it makes second-degree murder tough to prove and the prosecution must surely have known most of it when their affidavit was written. Remember, the affidavit expressly states that Zimmerman profiled Martin, implies that Zimmerman merely felt people had committed and gotten away with break-ins in his neighborhood, and asserted despite considerable evidence to the contrary that Zimmerman wantonly disregarded the 911 dispatchers instructions to stop following Martin.
Why did the media push a story so completely at variance with the picture Reuters paints of Zimmerman in this extensive profile? My guess is a combination of the hunger for sensationalism, a political agenda, and pure laziness. There was a time when such a major story would have called for more shoe leather, and less reliance upon press releases from interested parties.
If the Z man is even one drop black, can he possibly b racist?
Oh No, bad day for Progressives. Sandra Fluke engaged to a 1%er and Zimmerman is as black as Obama.
Well, I guess that settles it.
Black-on-black crime.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Zimm was not arrested, because he had no reason to be arrested......not until this monterous MSM “feeding frenzy” took over. If you look at Zimmerman’s background in totality, and recent events in Trayvon’s life, you get polar opposites. One gone good...(Zimmerman)one gone bad(Trayvon)
Because Obama and Holder ordered them to.
So Zimmerman is of ‘mixed-race’.
Then if Obama had a son, he’d look more like Zimmerman than Travon ?
Of course he can. Just ask Clarence Thomas or Allen West. There are no rules when dealing with the Left. It’s all about feelings.
” Why did the media push a story so completely at variance
Because Obama and Holder ordered them to.”
Yep
Just another case of black on black crime.
I'm tired of mainstream news media bias being attributed to "laziness" or the want to sell papers. If either of these were true they wouldn't self censor as they do when the roles are reversed.
Their stories are always polarized one way - any fool can see that.
They are purely politically motivated.
Can a American VOLUNTEER to be on the jury that sits on the trial called ZIMMERMAN vs The American Media?
I’d pay my own way to the courthouse, and donate the daily jury “stipend” to the charity of Mr. Zimmerman’s choice.
and..............maybe we all are.........still I think this is a stroke of genius from his judge father. If my kid was under the same magnifying glass, I hope I would come up with similar arguments to counter the “racist” stuff that is generated anytime the victim happens to have some “black” blood
Wow, as if the original narrative wasn’t screwed up enough already.
In the earliest of the reports that I read about the Martin/Zimmerman case there was mention of black in Zimmerman’s bloodline, but then THAT information disappeared, and was replaced with the “White Hispanic” identification.
I thought that rather strange, but life went on.
and Zimmerman is as black as Obama.
_______________________________________________________
If Zimmerman is a white Latino, then isn’t Obama a white African American? Obama is even more white than Zimmerman.
Under the one-drop rule, George is fully black, and every bit as black as Martin. I wonder if this means that the whole incident wasn’t the trayvesty of justice that some black political figures are claiming it to be.
to the Dems this case is like an IED that keeps going off in their faces every day
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