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comment by ecib
ecib  ·  4617 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why I Called George Zimmerman a Murderer, and Why I Was Wrong
    Seriously, there was 0 chance that charges wouldn't be filed. It costs the state, basically, chump change, and kicks the riot can down the street a ways.

Maybe. An alternate theory is that a crime was committed when an unarmed kid was shot dead.





thenewgreen  ·  4617 days ago  ·  link  ·  
"Maybe" is the key word. This guy has essentially been tried and convicted in most peoples minds. I have no clue what happened, nobody outside those involved do. That doesn't stop the jury of popular opinion from rendering verdicts left and right.

If he's guilty, he should spend life in prison. If not, he'll live his life with the scarlet letter "M". He's fucked either way.

Until a few moments ago I had not seen a photo of Zimmerman. Because of what I had heard/read in the media I expected a big white dude. He looks like a pudgy mexican. But that doesn't sell copy, does it?

cliffelam  ·  4617 days ago  ·  link  ·  
Maybe.

For a month there was no chance of charges being filed. Then the story got picked up.

There are guys who are in prison for 20+ years, then the story gets picked up and prosecution misconduct is discovered.

The story doesn't make them guilty or innocent. Though the current story is clearly slanted one way rather than the other. Makes you go: hmmmm.

-XC

ecib  ·  4617 days ago  ·  link  ·  
    Maybe. For a month there was no chance of charges being filed. Then the story got picked up.

That is also a maybe. It could be that the facts of the case were so strong that charges were inevitable, and that the police really screwed up.

    There are guys who are in prison for 20+ years, then the story gets picked up and prosecution misconduct is discovered.

And there are guys that should have gone to prison but never did, because of police misconduct. Hell, many of them are police.

As it stands, there is enough evidence of a crime to bring murder charges. He may be guilty, he may be innocent. The important thing is that it gets decided in a courtroom. Speculating and insinuating that charges were filed baselessly merely to assuage the public is just that, -speculation and insinuation. From what we know, you could make just as 'strong' of a speculative case that the police didn't arrest him when they should have in the first place.

pizzaparty  ·  4617 days ago  ·  link  ·  
seems to me that the real subject at hand is the medias handling of this story. From what I can gather, they have manipulated the story towards sensationalist ends. But then, maybe they haven't and I'll find out during the trial that everything that seems conjecture is actually fact.
ecib  ·  4617 days ago  ·  link  ·  
If he ends up convicted, I think there will have been more than one 'real subject at hand'. There will be be the murderer of a young black kid that was almost set free by the police and the massive misinformation and poor reporting of the story in the media (with one media organization actually fabricating parts of the story they were reporting on as far as I'm concerned).
pizzaparty  ·  4617 days ago  ·  link  ·  
What sort of accountability would you expect, if any?
ecib  ·  4617 days ago  ·  link  ·  
From who? The media?

NBC already did what they needed to do. They outright fired the producer who edited the 911 tapes: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/07/nbc-news-reportedly-fir...

As they should have. NBC also issued the obvious reiterations and reported on them. CNN has issued retractions as well.

But all of that is the bare minimum that needed to be done in response to despicable reporting in the fist place, and frankly, THAT is the problem that is not going to go away. Our for-profit media outlets are defined by the need to sensationalize to grab eyeballs. It's all about the bottom line. Fast and loose Newzertainment that covers anything that will make you sit up at attention in 2 minute intervals. I don't think there is any accountability in the mainstream media which is why I don't watch it. I will reference it though. I get my news from a plethora of sources online. The major news outlets are just a few data points of many in this mix.

pizzaparty  ·  4617 days ago  ·  link  ·  
"newzertainment", I have never heard that term before. It pretty well sums it up, doesn't it? They get away with it until the story is about something you're an expert in. Then their flaws become glaringly evident. What is the solution to our shitty media coverage?
ecib  ·  4617 days ago  ·  link  ·  
I think the solution is just to work a little harder to be informed instead of sitting on our asses. Instead of just sitting on the couch and taking what CNN (or god forbid Fox News or MSNBC) are shoveling us, we should go online and research any story we are interested in from a variety of sources. Take a patchwork of sources to arrive at a better understanding. It's especially important to reference non-profit media organizations as well as prominent bloggers, investigative reporters, and just average citizen reporters using social (and other) media.

Your understanding of an issue will always be a function of how much effort you expend studying it.