PC Information Management: The Martin and Zimmerman Con Job

The Martin/Zimmerman con job presents a crystal clear picture of
how the PC parts of the media present a distorted view of reality
to achieve their PC goals;
in this case, of persuading blacks and the general population
that blacks are somehow the victim of white racism.
Consider, for example, this oh-so-sincere video from Charles M. Blow, a New York Times columnist.
Blow would have us believe that Martin was shot because of either
the color of his skin or the way he walked and carried himself.
Not a mention of the wounds Martin inflicted on Zimmerman.
What a colossal lack of awareness!

---

The media used at least three methods to give its readers a distorted view of
the relative merits of the two side of the case against Zimmerman.

1. In the first place, they systematically failed to mention that
   Zimmerman had actually been wounded
   in their accounts of the case that appeared after their initial reports.
   Thus their reports invariably described the case as
   “the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager”
   (sometimes varied by mentioning his specific age of 17 rather than
   that he was a teenager),
   or noting the not terribly relevant fact that
   he had been carrying snack food while walking through the community,
   but omitted the highly relevant (to Zimmerman’s defense) fact that
   Zimmerman had been wounded by Martin.
   
   The message, by such inclusions and exclusions of information,
   was clear and inescapable to the reader:
   What is important to know is the youth and color of the person shot.
   What is not important to know is that
   the shooter had been injured by the person he shot
   before he fired the shot.
   
   My view, evidently unlike that of the ownership, management, and staff
   of such newspapers as the New York Times and Washington Post,
   is that represents a gross dereliction of the media’s duty
   to present the relevant facts that will allow its readers
   to make their own judgment on culpability and responsibility.
   
   By the way, before the jury verdict, while these pre-verdict stories were appearing,
   I noted this problem in my post “All the News That Fits Their Agenda,”
   in which I wrote back in May 2013 (but the emphasis is added on 2013-07-16)
   

   If Zimmerman is acquitted (possibly by a hung jury)
   and protests from the black community erupt,
   I think a large part of the responsibility for those protests will be
   the systematic failure of the media to report
   the real, physical, documented injuries to Zimmerman.

2. In some sense this is petty, but it has been said that
   “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
   I have no doubt that our “elite” newspapers pay close attention
   to what pictures they use, and the messages such pictures convey.
   In particular, the New York Times,
   in its overall index of its articles on the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case,
   (titled “Times Topics” / “Trayvon Martin Case (George Zimmerman)”,
   uses for its picture of Martin
   a photo of him when he was, it would appear, about eight years old,
   with the credit “Family / Orlando Sentinel”.
   
   Indeed, that photo, or one much like it,
   appeared with almost all the initial articles on the case.
   On the other hand, the accompanying photo of Zimmerman looks like
   a mug shot at the time of the shooting.
   The undeniable effect is to portray Martin as an innocent eight-year-old,
   while Zimmerman is a grown adult (in his late twenties).
   
   Using that childhood photo of Martin
   was understandable in the first days of reporting,
   when perhaps no other photos of him were available
   other than that one provided by his family.
   But as time went on other photos of Martin appeared
   showing him at an age much closer to
   when the incident in Florida occurred.
   What excuse can there be
   for continuing to portray a seventeen-year-old as a child?
   If that isn’t a false picture of reality, what is?
   But evidently tilting the scales to make Martin appear innocent
   was a prime objective of the New York Times
   and much of the rest of the media (e.g.).
3. Beyond the suppression of the injuries that Martin imposed on Zimmerman,
   the suppression of relevant background information
   on both the crime situation in The Retreat at Twin Lakes before the shooting
   and the text messages that Martin had previously sent on his cellphone.
   I must admit I have some hesitation about mentioning that last item,
   because at the Seminole County trial there were questions about
   whether those messages could really be authenticated
   as having been generated by Martin.
   That resonates with me,
   as I do have fears that hostile people could hack this Blogspot account
   and introduce spurious and harmful content into it.
   But I do mention it,
   as it is possible that those messages could be authenticated.
   
   As to the crime situation at The Retreat at Twin Lakes,
   note this quotation from the Reuters story:
   

   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.

4. Then there is the issue of the physical size of Trayvon Martin.
   While those who advocate that Martin was a victim
   almost always stress the youth of Martin,
   often calling him a boy
   (for an example of this, see the Eugene Robinson column “Denied the right to be young”),
   they fail to note the physical size of Martin.
   By the autopsy report, he was 5 feet, 11 inches tall.
   That makes him taller than the majority of adult males in this country.
   In other words, he had the height of a man,
   and his weight was proportionate
   (his Body Mass Index was around the 50th percentile).