only a handwritten: The Death Of Trayvon Martin - A Feeding Frenzy By Well-dressed Sharks

I am part of a multi-racial family that includes whites, blacks and Asians. My step daughter is a blend of all three and our family has some experience with racial intolerance. I mention that because it was part of the motivation that led me to write about the media coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting.

As a result of some of what I have written, I have been called a racist, a Nazi and a member of the Klan. I wasn’t overly offended by the labels understanding that they usually came from people who hadn’t invested five minutes to think about what is actually known about the shooting before they jumped on the bandwagon of condemnation. Instead they followed blindly like sheep and bought into the narrative created by a mainstream media that ignored and corrupted its own professional standards from the outset and by cynical opportunists with an agenda, like Al Sharpton. The sheep were manipulated and they were willing accomplices to that manipulation.

But if I am not angered by the names I have been called for speaking out, I am angry - I am very angry.

A young man died. It was another unnecessary violent death in a country that has lost too many to pointless violence and both his life and his death have been treated with the utmost disrespect and turned into an ugly circus.

photo: icis.com

It became nothing less than a feeding frenzy. Like mindless but well-dressed sharks, too many have torn at this story and each other in a hysterical madness.

It started slowly and then became an out of control frenzy as more sharks joined in to feed. Eventually, the sharks even began turning on each other, snapping at anything and anyone in an attempt to get a piece of the carcass. There was metaphorical blood everywhere and now the New Black Panthers are calling for their followers and the black community to rise up and swim the Red Sea, a specific reference to swimming in the blood of others.

People who have nothing to do with the shooting of Trayvon Martin have been verbally attacked and in some cases, physically threatened and put in harm’s way by others like Spike Lee. Not content with undermining Mr. Zimmerman’s right to presumption of innocence, members of the mainstream media have attacked each other, manipulated the facts and outright lied.

It has disgusted me and left me angry - very angry!

I’m angry with the hypocritical attitudes of those who have influence and privilege speaking carelessly about this terrible tragedy. They didn’t lead; they followed the insanity and further fed it.

Rev. Al Sharpton (photo: Miami Herald)

I am angry with Al Sharpton for a cynical opportunism that has accomplished nothing except to divide and endanger a community, a community not his own. I’m angry with all of those in the virtual world and beyond who should have known better, those sheep who have seen Mr. Sharpton in action in the past and who know him for what he really is but who followed him anyway.

But I am mostly angry with the mainstream media for their abandonment of balanced reporting and their lack of professionalism, integrity and ethics. It was the illusion of news coverage by pretty boys and girls in expensive suits who brought an elitist, biased attitude to this story and what they have done is a disgrace.

Instead of covering the story and letting the narrative unfold as facts became known, the media created a narrative and then presented or withheld information to support it.

It started with the visual representation of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. The media deliberately skewed the story by choosing to publish a picture of Trayvon when he was 12 and a mug shot of George Zimmerman from 6 years ago. The contrast was dramatic and fit their narrative perfectly.

The narrative was that George Zimmerman was a white, right-wing racist, just one more example of white against black racism in America. When it turned out that Mr. Zimmerman was actually Hispanic the media scrambled to create a new phrase to protect the narrative; white-Hispanic. The narrative was about white racism in America and didn’t work as well without reference to Mr. Zimmerman being white.

The narrative stated that Mr. Zimmerman was never arrested but that had to be amended when the police released a video tape showing Mr. Zimmerman arriving at the police station in handcuffs the night of the shooting.

That was glossed over quickly because it also didn’t fit the narrative that Mr. Zimmerman got a free pass that night of the shooting or that the police hadn’t done their job.

Some clucked about how Mr. Zimmerman seemed to be walking in the tape without any signs of having been injured during the altercation he claimed took place between him and Trayvon Martin; evidence they suggested that perhaps the altercation never took place. They pointed out that there was no indication of any injury to the back of Mr. Zimmerman’s head which they subsequently had to amend when an enhanced version of the tape was released.

They also didn’t report that the police who were first on the scene had requested two ambulances, one for Trayvon Martin and one for George Zimmerman. Mr. Zimmerman’s was subsequently cancelled after EMR treated him in the back of a squad car.

And then there was the famous 911 tape.

Various media outlets turned themselves inside out to get audio experts to listen to the tape, to enhance it and do whatever they could to prove that Mr. Zimmerman referred to Trayvon Martin as a ‘coon’. Hours were devoted to playing the tape both on and off air to try and prove that Mr. Zimmerman uttered a racist slur. Contrast that with the lack of coverage of the most recent tape by the Black Panthers where words like honky and white devil are thrown around liberally in reference to white people.

It didn’t work out for the media. The enhanced version of the 911 call clearly showed that Mr. Zimmerman used the term ‘punk’ not ‘coon’.

The media made much of the fact that their audio experts claimed that there was only a 48% chance that the voice calling for help on the tape was Mr. Zimmerman's. They were very quiet about the fact that this meant there was only a 52% chance that it was Trayvon Martin's which is about as close as a 50/50 circumstance as it is possible to get without actually getting it.

The media played up a narrative of how blacks are the victims of violent crimes by whites and ignored justice department statistics that clearly show that it is whites who are seven times more likely to be the victims of black induced crime.

But the narrative started to unravel.

In an attempt to protect it, a producer at NBC went so far as to edit the tape to make it appear that it was Mr. Zimmerman who first identified Trayvon as black and therefore help prove that the shooting was racially motivated. When it was revealed that the tape had been altered by NBC and it was actually the 911 operator who first mentioned race, the narrative was further undermined and the producer was fired from his position.

As a result of the narrative unraveling, the agitators have begun to abandon ship. Jesse Jackson has become very low profile and the Rev. Al Sharpton who promised an Easter weekend of protest that would force the Sanford police to arrest Mr. Zimmerman suddenly had other, more pressing business to attend to in New York and was a no show. Instead, they have left streets of Sanford to The New Black Panthers and Neo-Nazis and the threat of increased racial violence.

Even the media are backtracking now. Perhaps it is because they’ve been caught in one inaccuracy too many or perhaps it is because the narrative they initially created has broken down to such a point that they now stand exposed for their lack of balanced reporting and unprofessional behaviour.

Perhaps it is because their right-wing racist narrative is now completely discredited by the revelation that Mr. Zimmerman is actually a registered Democrat and advocated for the disciplining of at least two of the police officers investigating him.

George ||Zimmerman advocated for justice for
Sherman Ware brutally beaten by a police officer's son

His demand stemmed from the brutal beating by a police officer’s son of a homeless black man, Sherman Ware. Mr. Zimmerman played an active role in trying to get justice for Mr. Ware while the hypocrites in the media and like the Rev. Sharpton were noticeably absent. Apparently they only support the glamour causes.

We still don’t know everything that happened the night Trayvon Martin was shot but it has become increasingly clear that the narrative fed us by the mainstream media and racist opportunists like Al Sharpton is not accurate and almost none in the media undertook any attempt to present balanced coverage.

We know a great deal of Trayvon Martin, we know very little about George Zimmerman beyond the negatives the mainstream media selectively fed us.

It may well turn out that charges should and will be laid against Mr. Zimmerman and if they are, justice should run its course, but make no mistake about it. If charges are laid, that will not justify what has happened here. The media and the bottom feeders have created an environment of suspicion, anger and intolerance that will lead many to deny the facts once they are known and presented

Mike Wallace, a renowned American journalist died today and he is remembered with respect and admiration. As a result of their actions, their lack of professionalism and ethics, there are very few journalists in the mainstream media today who come close to deserving the respect he earned. Many have lost the right to even consider themselves journalists after having so egregiously denigrated the profession that Mr. Wallace and others like him so painstakingly built.

It has left me angry at the dishonesty of it all. I am angry at the lack of professional standards, the rush to judgment, the hypocrisy and the damage these people have done.

Most of all, I am angry that so many others were so easily manipulated by those with an agenda and a narrative they created to support that agenda. I am angry that fundamental rights like due process and the presumption of innocence were so quickly trampled and I am angry that so many have so little respect for their own society, they rush like mindless sheep to trample it.

The Trayvon Martin shooting was a terrible tragedy turned into an ugly circus of hypocrisy, racial intolerance and outright lies and fabrications. It has been a feeding frenzy by mindless sharks out to get what they could for themselves. It is both a travesty and a disgrace that has demeaned the life and death of a young man for no better reason than to fit a narrative that met the needs of a few who benefited from it.

I think that has angered me more than anything else.