The Great Tray-Con: America Manipulated to Miss the Real Story
Initial reports that stoked the fury of the masses said Zimmerman was never even taken in for questioning. Of course, that turned out to be a lie. He was taken in in handcuffs, as a matter of fact, as video shows. How many other lies were there? Can we count them all? Needless to say, if the story was initially reported consistent with what the facts bore out, it wouldn’t have been much of a sensation.
One of the key lies that stoked the embers of racial tension was when NBC released a tape of Zimmerman saying, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black,” for seemingly no reason other than to profile a black kid as a potential criminal. However, the alleged news stations (we probably should call them propaganda stations), conveniently deleted out several seconds of audio which showed the operator had asked the race of the youth, so police could identify him.
Oh, just a small detail. He answered a question, for crying out loud, he didn’t smear the kid with a racial insult!
Then WABC puts out a video it claims showed Zimmerman suffered no damage to his head or face in the fight with Trayvon. Only problem is, instead of looking for wounds, they were hoping not to see any. As we know from police footage, Zimmerman did have a busted nose, lacerations on the back of his head and blood spilling out of him.
It wasn’t tremendous physical damage done to him in the fight, but it wouldn’t have been fun to be on the receiving end of those blows either. But alas, the experts at WABC couldn’t be bothered to get an accurate look at his head, anxious instead to see what they wanted.
And another station was caught turning the word “cold” into “coon.” No wonder everybody got riled up, it would be outrageous if a watch volunteer casually referred to someone as a coon on a 911 tape! But again, none of it was real, and when it was revealed as being non-real, for some reason few changed their initial reaction of outrage. It’s as if we’re in a state of mass hypnosis.
Then there’s the trick of showing the pre-teen photo of the victim to stoke empathy, while making the “bad guy” look, well, bad. It’s just a show like any TV or movie.
The bigger story that Trayvon vs. Zimmerman provides, is the inexcusable and unethical practices of our national news media.
It does seem following the vast number of inaccurate reports disseminated during and after the Boston bombings and the Newtown massacre, there is some growing awareness that working in this field of media we journalists should try to, you know, get the facts at least mostly straight, before running with a story.
As much as the Internet has grown and we try to deny the power of TV and the big networks and newspapers to ourselves, we’re lying if we can’t admit, for the biggest stories that really move the world, the old establishment news media still has us in their grip. Even when we know they’re advancing an agenda, it’s hard to break free 100 percent.
The mass media drives story-lines that end up creating our political destiny, and we follow even when we know the stories aren’t really legit. Once they inflame emotions, their job is already done.
It’s like we’re in an abusive relationship with the lying news media, making excuses for them. If you are a media critic, you are not exempt. More people must be stubborn when we learn a story is bull.
Kick the habit! You didn’t feel that. The media made it happen.
Dylan Skriloff is the editor-in-chief of the Rockland County Times and is a local supervisor candidate in Stony Point, Rockland County, and a member of the New York State Conservative Party. Check out his newspaper at www.rocklandtimes. com or look him up on Facebook.
