As much as you want to whistle past this particular graveyard, there's no rational way to argue that the media acted anything near responsibly in coverage of this story.
When the media began coverage of this story, Zimmerman was painted as white. I agree that the police reports described Zimmerman as a white male, but they continued with this narrative long after Zimmerman's ethnicity became apparent. Worse even, Zimmerman's ethnicity had no real bearing on the actual events, but the media as whole introduced it as one. They chose this narrative and continued it even after it became very apparent that it was in error. The template was set.
Yet again, the main issue being covered was not Zimmerman's bizarre agreession, it was the SPD's refusal to arrest him. And yes, given their habit of not arresting white people who attack black people, this makes Zimmerman's skin color relevant as an explanation for why, say, Chief Lee thought it would be a good idea to announce that he was the true victim of racism in this event.
The fact that most began my interest in this case was the photographic depection of Martin. His apparent age and physical depection led me to believe that there could be no reasonable cause for justification for a grown man to shoot an unarmed preteen - which was how the photos depicted Martin. Once again, the template for the media was a white guy shot an unarmed black preteen. Of course, we now know that particualr facet of this media template was first in error (the Martin family only released the younger pictures) but that wasn't harmless error. The apparent physical disparity goes to the heart of the case. They should have never ran those misleading pictures and if they decided to, they should have been heavily captioned and explained in the article itself.
Well, I don't know what to tell you on this one. Pretty much every article identified Martin's age as 17, and again, there were a umber of photos published of him, so it was obvious that the older photos of him were...well, older. And no, I will not pretend that Martin's family only produced photos of him as a child, or that the media only showed such photos.
The media presupposed police misconduct in this case. One can argue that the police acted without due diligence but again, they lewft out any other explanation for police actions. It was not until the SPD cited the statutory limitation against arrest theat they even deemed it worth mentioning. They did not mention until much later that Zimmerman volunteered statements, that he was in police custody, that the gun was seized as evidence, etc... Instead, they chose to inflame the white man shooting a yound black kid while the police turned a blind eye.
The media reported on the SPD's conduct as they were given info by the SPD. Yes, there were assertions that they did a poor job - and I still find this to be credible. The fact that Zimmerman volunteered statements was known. It was, in fact, the SPD's stonewalling of Martin's family, along with their odd statements to the press, that caught attention, and once Chief Lee's assertion that Zimmerman didn't know Martin's race was disproven by Zimmerman's police call, the whole thing exploded. And considering that, I'd say that people were correct to question the SPD's professionalism.
They misrepresented the injuries to Zimmerman, they chose to hide the claim that Zimmerman was the one pleading for help, etc...
Your first assertion is false - in fact, the police footage showed no sign of injury, and ABC went so far as to use "enhanced" stills to claim that Zimmerman had massive gashes on his head. The assertion that Zimmerman claimed that he was the one yelling for help, was always known - although questionable.
There has been three employees of NBC fired for three seperate instances of editing recordings of Zimmerman's call to police. In each instance, they cut out intervening comments and placed Zimmerman's claims of suspicious behavior next to a description of Martin's apparent ethnicity.
And this is the only real case of media making Zimmerman appear guilty.
For my own part, I have been very reticent to cast aspersions on Martin's conduct prior to the night of the shooting, even after every little wart from Zimmerman has been recited ad naseum here. You cannot, in good faith, contend that Zimmerman's past is relevant to his propensity to overreact that night and pretend that Martin's prior conduct is off-limits. It's one way or another.
and I have not bothered with Zimmerman's past - his own police call portrays him as overreactive and reckless in response to Martin, who he basically described as walking down the street, so there's no need to dig into his past. But regardless, posing with gold fronts in front of your webcam does not make to a thug.
