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Trayvon Martin, Vigilante Justice

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GWCarver said:
Why do you think it is now the policy of most major newspapers around the country not to identify the race of individuals involved in most crimes that are reported?
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Because in most cases, the race of the individuals involved is immaterial?
 
Dan O. said:
You are in a much better position to spot the error. when someone shows a strong confirmation bias tendency, they will be able to read their own post over and over and each time see exactly what they had intended to write and not see the typo. With a fresh set of eyes you will see the inconsistency so you need to help them out by highlighting the specific word or phrase to force them to read it out of context. Only then will they see that it wasn't what they meant.
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You don't need a strong confirmation bias for this to happen, it's part of how the human brain works. We tend to know what we wrote/typed, so we read what we think we wrote instead of what is actually there, we add missing leters and words, and correct typos and spelling mistakes on the fly, all without realising we are doing it.

"About" becomes "Able", "Than" becomes "Then", "Can" becomes "Can't", "Car" becomes "Cars", and "The woman sat down the table" becomes "The woman sat down at the table", all in our heads, even though it's wrong on the page.

For some reason this action is stronger on a VDU than on paper, but even on paper it still occurs. The really interesting thing is that it generally only happens when we are reading it in our heads, if you read it aloud, you'll often locate the mistake, as it seems that reading in your head, and reading aloud use different parts of the brain with Broca's Area coming into play in reading aloud as well as Wernicke's Area. This appears to make some sort of difference in how we understand our own writtings. (I haven't looked to see if there is a study on it, I wouldn't be at all surprised if there is.)

ETA : Here's a link that does touch on it a little

As a result of all of this, I would often make my students read out their work aloud to themselves before handing it in for marking, it helped fix a lot of mistakes.
 
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PhantomWolf said:
You don't need a strong confirmation bias for this to happen, it's part of how the human brain works.
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I suspect it was Dan O's confirmation bias that caused him to want to attribute a simple spelling mistake to confirmation bias ;). In fact, it took quite a bit of stretching on his part to do so.
 
EdG said:
Because in most cases, the race of the individuals involved is immaterial?
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No, the reason a newspaper doesn't report something they have sitting right in front of them when writing the article is because they don't want you to know.
 
GWCarver said:
No, the reason a newspaper doesn't report something they have sitting right in front of them when writing the article is because they don't want you to know.
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I see no reason whatsoever an article should bother to mention the race, religion or sexual orientation of a perpetrator OR victim. Why would it be relevant?

The only exception would be if race or religion or sexual orientation was the reason for the crime, and hopefully then it would only be reported if there was good evidence of it and not just as unfounded speculation.
 
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GWCarver said:
No, the reason a newspaper doesn't report something they have sitting right in front of them when writing the article is because they don't want you to know.
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No, it's because it's usually immaterial. Just as they don't mention race when discussing, say, world leaders, sports stars, or white collar crime. And this is the same reason why they rarely mention build, gender, sexual preference, height, hair style, clothing, jewelry, religion, or any number of other characteristics.

However, when the police ask for help in finding a suspect, they pretty much always mention the person's race.
 
GWCarver said:
No, the reason a newspaper doesn't report something they have sitting right in front of them when writing the article is because they don't want you to know.
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Sometimes. Sometimes it's just a lack of infinite space to print every last detail. I hardly ever see them print the brand name of the tires on the cars that crashed. But I'd like to know this. I'd like to know so I can use that data to decide if there is a link between car tires and car crashes.

Perhaps the media is concealing that from us? Down this road lies the madness of conspiracy theories.
 
Mumbles said:
No, it's because it's usually immaterial. Just as they don't mention race when discussing, say, world leaders, sports stars, or white collar crime. And this is the same reason why they rarely mention build, gender, sexual preference, height, hair style, clothing, jewelry, religion, or any number of other characteristics.

However, when the police ask for help in finding a suspect, they pretty much always mention the person's race.
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OK. Then you should be able to explain why all of the papers in the country were mentioning George Zimmerman, whose father is white and mother Hispanic, and the black teenager he shot. No one was looking for Zimmerman.
 
GWCarver said:
OK. Then you should be able to explain why all of the papers in the country were mentioning George Zimmerman, whose father is white and mother Hispanic, and the black teenager he shot. No one was looking for Zimmerman.
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For the most part, it was because the police did not arrest him, and because he had no apparent reason to be suspicious of Martin. The first brings to mind both the US' long history of injustice, and the Sanford PD's more recent botching of cases where black people are attacked by white people - in fact, their previous chief had resigned due to this. The latter opens the possibility of racial profiling - since other than that, there's little to no reason to call 911 on a person who is "walking around, looking about".
 
GWCarver said:
OK. Then you should be able to explain why all of the papers in the country were mentioning George Zimmerman, whose father is white and mother Hispanic, and the black teenager he shot. No one was looking for Zimmerman.
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Because the issue of race was injected into the story. I agree with you that there were all sorts of accusations of racism with very little evidence to support them. However that means this case was handled poorly. However race still IS a huge issue in this country so it's not surprising that there will be cases where it's brought up.

However I'm not sure how you get from here to there. "There" being that it's somehow wrong that as a matter of policy papers don't report the race/religion/sexual orientation of criminals or victims. Are you advocating that they should? If so, why?
 
Mumbles said:
For the most part, it was because the police did not arrest him, and because he had no apparent reason to be suspicious of Martin. The first brings to mind both the US' long history of injustice, and the Sanford PD's more recent botching of cases where black people are attacked by white people - in fact, their previous chief had resigned due to this. The latter opens the possibility of racial profiling - since other than that, there's little to no reason to call 911 on a person who is "walking around, looking about".
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So, you feel the MSM reported Zimmerman's race because he hadn't been arrested? That doesn't make any sense, there was no warrant out for him, or even a BOLO. The police weren't worried he would hurt anyone. Actually, Zimmerman is the rare case in which race doesn't matter, one of the few cases in which the MSM policy of not reporting the race of dangerous people wouldn't have endangered the public.
 
@ABC exclusive: medical report from morning after Zimmerman shot #Trayvonmartin.
Show he had broken nose, swollen face blck eyes. 2 cuts
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https://twitter.com/#!/mattgutmanABC/status/202508334832689152

A medical report compiled by the family physician of accused Trayvon Martin murderer George Zimmerman and obtained exclusively by ABC News found that Zimmerman was diagnosed with a "closed fracture" of his nose, a pair of black eyes, two lacerations to the back of his head and a minor back injury the day after he fatally shot Martin during an alleged altercation
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The record shows that Zimmerman also suffered bruising in the upper lip and cheek and lower back pain. The two lacerations on the back of his head, one of them nearly an inch long, the other about a quarter-inch long, were first revealed in photos obtained exclusively by ABC News last month.

But the report also shows Zimmerman declined hospitalization the night of the shooting, and then declined the advice of his doctor to make a follow-up appointment with an ear nose and throat doctor.
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http://abcnews.go.com/US/george-zim...juries-trayvon/story?id=16353532#.T7LWO8X4Ju8
 
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Natural Born Skeptic said:
Because the issue of race was injected into the story. I agree with you that there were all sorts of accusations of racism with very little evidence to support them. However that means this case was handled poorly. However race still IS a huge issue in this country so it's not surprising that there will be cases where it's brought up.

However I'm not sure how you get from here to there. "There" being that it's somehow wrong that as a matter of policy papers don't report the race/religion/sexual orientation of criminals or victims. Are you advocating that they should? If so, why?
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I will answer your question, but your inclusion of "religion/sexual orientation" shows you appear to have not given this much thought and aren't taking it seriously.

My point is the MSM has a policy of leaving out race, but only when it matches its political agenda. The MSM policy is to include race when it is found to be politically expedient. It has nothing to do with whether it is newsworthy, other than the exception already noted.

The reason race should be included in the description of people who commit crimes is so the public will have the information it needs to stay safe. The location of the crime is always noted, as is the gender of the suspect(s). The race is what is left out. As a result, information that could contribute to the public safety is held back purposefully by the MSM.

Now, the police wanted to know the race of TM when Zimmerman was talking to them on the phone. There is a reason for that, and it is the exact same reason the public needs to know the race of the people who commit crimes and get away. The public needs to know just as much about who the police are looking for as the police do, because the public is much more likely to run into the burglar or rapist who got away before the police.
 
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The state is going to have a long row to hoe to get this thing past an immunity hearing. Let's hope that Judge Lester has the courage to do the right thing here - no matter what that thing would be.
 
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