Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Media still claiming that Trayvon Martin was shot while walking home from 7-Eleven but key revelation from trial was that Martin ran home first, then went back out, angry at "creepy ass cracka"
Two years after George Zimmerman’s acquittal widespread pre-trial misinformation about Zimmerman’s shooting of Trayvon Martin remains set in media stone. It’s as if the trial never happened. After the last spate of coverage for Zimmerman’s shooting of Trayvon Martin I started rounding up a survey of the coverage. That was back in February when the DOJ announced it would not file civil rights charges against Zimmerman.
As documented below, almost every news report summarized Zimmerman’s shooting of Martin as occurring while Martin was on the way back to his father’s house from a nearby 7-Eleven. That is a direct contradiction of the testimony from Martin’s friend Rachel Jeantel who had been on the phone with Martin when Martin and Zimmerman first saw each other. Martin initially started to approach Zimmerman, then decided to run away, at which point his phone call with Jeantel disconnected. She said in court that when they reconnected a short time later Martin sounded tired and told her that he was back by his father’s house (first reported by Andrew Branca at Legal Insurrection).
The fatal confrontation occurred a couple of minutes later about a hundred yards back in the direction where Martin and Zimmerman had first seen each other. Thus the best and only evidence we have says that the beating of Zimmerman by Martin and the shooting of Martin by Zimmerman occurred, not when Martin was on his way home, but shortly after he left home, apparently in search of Zimmerman, who he called a “creepy ass cracker” according to Jeantel.
Of course that changes everything. It strongly suggests that Martin went back out to find Zimmerman, which strongly supports Zimmerman’s claim that it was Martin who initiated the confrontation and Martin who attacked him.
This best and only evidence about the actual sequence of events doesn't tell the story that our Democrat-dominated media wants to tell. They believe that stories of black victimization are advantageous for their political side so that is what they publish, the facts be damned.
When civil rights charges were not filed against Zimmerman most news reports explained this result by emphasizing the difficulty of proving that the reason Zimmerman shot Martin is because Martin was black, and their counter-to-evidence statement of the facts allowed them to create the impression that it was likely that the shooting of Travyon Martin was a race-motivated execution. Thus was the utter lack of any case against Zimmerman presented as yet another re-victimization of the black community.
Several major news reports went so far as to assert another strongly counter-to-evidence claim: that it was Zimmerman who initiated the fatal confrontation, and The New York Times fixed blame further by reporting that Zimmerman “got out of his car — ignoring the advice of a police dispatcher.” Anyone who is willing to listen to the recording of the call can verify for themselves that it was only after Zimmerman was already out of his car and could be heard getting winded that the police dispatcher advised him not to follow, at which point Zimmerman immediately replied “okay.”
The claim that Zimmerman declined to follow police advice is just a flat lie, which is no surprise. The Grey Lady is always the worst violator of journalistic ethics. Every lie that fits in print, if it serves the Democratic party’s perverse conception of its own interests.
This is obviously never going to stop so the second anniversary of Zimmerman’s acquittal seems a good time to lay out the actual evidence from the trial as it contradicts the media’s ongoing narrative. To keep this post manageable I am putting a lot of documentation (full survey results, etcetera) in a set of five addenda. The body of the post focuses on the evidence that Martin made it home before the fatal confrontation, and the front page coverage that this revelation received during the trial.
All the reporters know about it! Which makes their counter-to-evidence statements of fact all the more damning. Here are the first three summaries of the shooting incident that I came across when the DOJ announced there would be no civil rights charges against Zimmerman.
As documented below, almost every news report summarized Zimmerman’s shooting of Martin as occurring while Martin was on the way back to his father’s house from a nearby 7-Eleven. That is a direct contradiction of the testimony from Martin’s friend Rachel Jeantel who had been on the phone with Martin when Martin and Zimmerman first saw each other. Martin initially started to approach Zimmerman, then decided to run away, at which point his phone call with Jeantel disconnected. She said in court that when they reconnected a short time later Martin sounded tired and told her that he was back by his father’s house (first reported by Andrew Branca at Legal Insurrection).
The fatal confrontation occurred a couple of minutes later about a hundred yards back in the direction where Martin and Zimmerman had first seen each other. Thus the best and only evidence we have says that the beating of Zimmerman by Martin and the shooting of Martin by Zimmerman occurred, not when Martin was on his way home, but shortly after he left home, apparently in search of Zimmerman, who he called a “creepy ass cracker” according to Jeantel.
Of course that changes everything. It strongly suggests that Martin went back out to find Zimmerman, which strongly supports Zimmerman’s claim that it was Martin who initiated the confrontation and Martin who attacked him.
This best and only evidence about the actual sequence of events doesn't tell the story that our Democrat-dominated media wants to tell. They believe that stories of black victimization are advantageous for their political side so that is what they publish, the facts be damned.
When civil rights charges were not filed against Zimmerman most news reports explained this result by emphasizing the difficulty of proving that the reason Zimmerman shot Martin is because Martin was black, and their counter-to-evidence statement of the facts allowed them to create the impression that it was likely that the shooting of Travyon Martin was a race-motivated execution. Thus was the utter lack of any case against Zimmerman presented as yet another re-victimization of the black community.
Several major news reports went so far as to assert another strongly counter-to-evidence claim: that it was Zimmerman who initiated the fatal confrontation, and The New York Times fixed blame further by reporting that Zimmerman “got out of his car — ignoring the advice of a police dispatcher.” Anyone who is willing to listen to the recording of the call can verify for themselves that it was only after Zimmerman was already out of his car and could be heard getting winded that the police dispatcher advised him not to follow, at which point Zimmerman immediately replied “okay.”
The claim that Zimmerman declined to follow police advice is just a flat lie, which is no surprise. The Grey Lady is always the worst violator of journalistic ethics. Every lie that fits in print, if it serves the Democratic party’s perverse conception of its own interests.
This is obviously never going to stop so the second anniversary of Zimmerman’s acquittal seems a good time to lay out the actual evidence from the trial as it contradicts the media’s ongoing narrative. To keep this post manageable I am putting a lot of documentation (full survey results, etcetera) in a set of five addenda. The body of the post focuses on the evidence that Martin made it home before the fatal confrontation, and the front page coverage that this revelation received during the trial.
All the reporters know about it! Which makes their counter-to-evidence statements of fact all the more damning. Here are the first three summaries of the shooting incident that I came across when the DOJ announced there would be no civil rights charges against Zimmerman.
Mis-statements of fact, set in media stone
From USA Today:
Zimmerman shot Trayvon, 17, on Feb. 26, 2012, as the teen walked back to a relative's home after purchasing snacks at a convenience store in Sanford, Fla.
From ABC:
The case sparked intense discussions over race in America because Martin was walking to his home with only Skittles and an iced tea in his hands.
And from US News:
Zimmerman shot Martin in a Sanford, Florida, gated community after what Zimmerman described was a violent tussle with the 17-year-old. Martin was unarmed and walking back to the house where he was visiting father after a trip to a local convenience store.
Contrast these media summaries with the key revelation from the trial, where Martin’s friend Rachel Jeantel testified about her second phone call with Martin, after he had run away from Zimmerman’s initial surveillance. The first call disconnected when Martin started running. When Martin and Jeantel reconnected 18 seconds later (see the phone-call timeline in Addendum 1) she testified that he sounded tired and (at some point in the conversation) that he said was back by his father’s house (about a hundred yards beyond where the fatal confrontation occurred):
JEANTEL: He sounded tired, sir.
WEST: And you don't know how far he may have run.
JEANTEL: No, sir. …
WEST: And you have this conversation with him for a couple of minutes, and then he says he sees the man again?
JEANTEL: Yes, sir. … He told me that he was close to him.
WEST: Right. At that point he [Trayvon] decided to approach this man and say, why are you following me?
JEANTEL: Yes, sir.
WEST: And he could have just run home if he wasn't there.
JEANTEL: He was already by his house. He told me.
There is no other evidence about where Martin was during the three and a half minutes between his running away from Zimmerman and his fatal encounter with Zimmerman a hundred yards from his father’s house. The best and only evidence is Jeantel’s claim that Martin told her at some point during this second phone call that he was back by his father’s house. That evidence says he was not heading home when the confrontation occurred, but has just left his home, very likely with the intent of confronting Zimmerman.
Is it too much to ask that the media’s one and two line summaries of the case not directly contradict key evidence from the trial? We don’t have a real press anymore. We have Democratic operatives with bylines.
“That’s real retarded sir”: Jeantel’s testimony about Martin getting back to his house was the most highlighted moment of the entire trial thanks to defense attorney West's confused attempt to refute it
When Jeantel revealed that during the second phone call Martin had said he was by his house, Zimmerman’s attorney Don West, not realizing that Jeantel had just made his case for him, started suggesting that maybe Martin had been lying about having reached his father’s house. When West persisted in this counter-to-interest line Jeantel astutely observe that West was being “real retarded,” landing the exchange on the front page of most major newspapers.
Any reporter who is the least bit familiar with the case would have to know about it. Even left-wing outfits like Huffpo/AP reported it (6/27/13):
At one point, West suggested that though Martin told her he was by his father's fiancee's house while Zimmerman was following him, that she doesn't know that for sure.
"Why he need to lie about that, sir?" Jeantel asked West.
"Maybe if he decided to assault George Zimmerman, he didn't want you to know about it," West replied.
"That's real retarded, sir," she said.
Together with the eyewitness testimony of John Good that it was Martin who was on top raining down punches “MMA style,” and the physical evidence that Martin had been bashing Zimmerman’s head into the concrete, Jeantel’s testimony that Martin said he was home, and by implication must have gone back out in search of Zimmerman, makes self-defense a near certainty.
The burden of proof goes the other way. It is the prosecution that has to show beyond reasonable doubt that Zimmerman was not defending himself, thus the only miscarriage of justice was that Zimmerman was ever charged at all, but that truth does not serve the media’s interests, and to evade it they are willing to mis-report even the most high profile facts.
In my semi-complete survey (Addendum 3) only Fox and NBC managed not to actually contradict key evidence but no press organization described how the evidence supported Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense. Presented with an opportunity to shed light on why civil rights charges were not viable our press corps chose instead to either take a pass or to actively un-explain the decision, making it seem as if a guilty man was going free (again), in most cases by directly contradicting the facts that came out in the trial.
They all know that the trial’s big “that’s real retarded sir” moment was about Jeantel’s revelation that Martin said he was back at his house minutes before the fatal confrontation. They just don’t want you to know what they know.
Alternate juror explains the import of Trayvon having reached his house before the confrontation
If reporters cannot figure it out for themselves, an alternate juror came out after the trial and explained it to everyone. In his account the keys to the verdict were the injuries to Zimmerman and Jeantel’s admission that Martin had reached his father’s house, then somehow ended up pummeling Zimmerman a hundred yards away. If the best evidence they had was that Martin had gone back out looking for Zimmerman, that strongly supported Zimmerman’s claim that it was Trayvon who attacked him:
And then she [Rachel Jeantel] called back and she called to talk to him again.
At that point, Trayvon said he had lost the man and he was at this -- this -- where his father was staying. He was at that place. At the same time of that -- that happening, George Zimmerman had only just gotten out of his car about 25, 30 seconds. So he was still up at the T.
And Trayvon, according to Jeantel's -- or Rachel's testimony, would have been down the other end of the buildings at that point. So somehow, those two got back together up at the top of the T.
And you know, we don't know how that happened but -- and in all likelihood, in my mind, you know, even if George Zimmerman had walked down to where Trayvon was, they both walked back up to the T. So that would have implied that Trayvon had followed George Zimmerman back up.
If George Zimmerman didn't walk down there, then Trayvon walked up, back up to the T somehow because then the earwitnesses heard the noises up there, most of the earwitnesses, I believe. One of them said the noises went the other direction. But the majority of them had the noises coming from the top of the T down to the truck where -- where John Good saw him laying on the ground, or Trayvon on top of George Zimmerman.
And I believe that John Good said that it was -- I believe -- I believed that it was Zimmerman because he had the color of the jacket that he had.
And so tying all those together and the injuries that George Zimmerman had, that's where I -- that's where I came to my conclusion that it was justifiable.
With the revelation that Trayvon had reached his father’s house the verdict is easy to explain, which is why the press pretends that this information never came out.
If anyone had their civil rights violated it was George Zimmerman, first by Trayvon Martin, then by President Obama
Between Martin and Zimmerman the only one who seems to have been motivated by race (necessary for a civil rights violation) was Trayvon Martin. In contrast to Martin’s racially bigoted “creepy ass cracker” remark, Zimmerman did not mention Martin’s race (“he looks black”) until asked by the 911 dispatcher (regardless of NBC’s doctoring of the 911 tapes to say otherwise).
The 911 tapes also reveal incredible forbearance on Zimmerman’s part. A voice that can only be Zimmerman’s was recorded screaming for help (or “yelping for help” according to the police report) 14 times in 38 seconds, and before that 911 call began the fight had already been going on for 27 seconds (the gap between the end of the second Martin-Jeantel call and the first 911 call), plus whatever part of the fight Jeantel heard before her call disconnected.
Over this span Zimmerman absorbed numerous “MMA style” ground-and-pound punches and had the back of his head smashed into the concrete multiple times before he finally pulled his gun and fired a single shot at his assailant. Wow dude, what took you so long?
The strong evidence that Martin went back out from his house to confront the “creepy ass cracker” who had been keeping an eye on him indicates clearly that Martin’s use of life-threatening force against Zimmerman was not in self-defense and had a clear racist motivation. Martin was violating Zimmerman’s civil rights, while Zimmerman’s extraordinary reluctance to use lethal force belies any claim that he was acting in other than self-defense.
The obvious miscarriage of justice here was the decision to charge Zimmerman at all, never mind under blatantly racist pressure from the President of the United States, who was emoting at the time how: “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.”
In 1986 The U.S. Court of Military Appeals opined that “Command influence is the mortal enemy of military justice,” and the same holds true for the civilian courts. Due process must prevail not just in the courts but in the prosecutor’s office and there is no more improper process than to base a prosecutorial decision on racial sympathy for one of the parties, never mind under the influence of high level political pressure, but this is exactly the pressure that “constitutional scholar” Barack Hussein Obama brought to bear.
As Zimmerman himself has protested, that is a real wrong. In contrast, there is nothing wrong at all when a murderous assailant is killed by the defensive actions of his would-be victim. If only it could always turn out that way.
The end
Further documentation and discussion are provided in the following five addenda
Addendum 1: Map of the scene and phone call timeline
Addendum 2: Other counter-to-evidence media claim (that Zimmerman initiated the fatal confrontation and that he disregarded police instructions or advice)
Addendum 3: My semi-complete survey of errant media summaries of the facts
Addendum 4: Rachel Jeantel’s post-trial revelations
Addendum 5: The Media’s refusal to portray Trayvon (“no limits nigga”) Martin as he saw himself
Addendum 1: Map of the scene and phone call timeline
The 7-eleven that Trayvon Martin was walking back from (1125 Rinehart Rd) was a half mile or so to the east/left down Oregon Avenue at the top of the image above (click for larger). When George Zimmerman first spotted him inside the gated Twin Lakes community Martin and his friend Rachel Jeantel had already been talking on the phone for about fifteen minutes. That could explain why Martin seemed to Zimmerman to be “just walking around” in the rain, “looking about.” Here is the beginning of Zimmerman’s call to the Sanford police department. He gives his location as near the clubhouse, which is near the intersection inside the northern gate:
Zimmerman: Hey, we've had some break-ins in my neighborhood and there's a real suspicious guy. … This guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around looking about.
Martin saw Zimmerman watching him and correctly assessed that Zimmerman was looking at him as a possible criminal. According to Jeantel’s testimony Martin called Zimmerman a “creepy-ass cracker,” which she would later explain to Piers Morgan meant “a person who act like they are police.”
From Zimmerman’s call, Martin’s first reaction to being watched seems to have been aggressive, before he changed his mind and ran away:
Zimmerman: Something's wrong with him. Yep, he's coming to check me out. He's got something in his hands. I don't know what his deal is.
Dispatcher: Ah, OK, just let me know if he does anything.
Zimmerman: Get an officer over here. …
Zimmerman: s---, he's running. … Down toward the other entrance of the neighborhood.
The “other entrance” is at the southeast corner of the neighborhood, next to Martin’s father’s fiancée’s house.
The second Jeantel-Martin phone call
It was 7:11:41 PM when Zimmerman told the police dispatcher that Martin was running. Seven seconds later, at 7:11:48, the first Jeantel-Martin phone call disconnected (see the 13:35 mark of this video testimony from T-Mobile representative Raymond MacDonald) and the evidence suggests that he ran all or most of the way back to his father’s fiancee’s house.
It was only 18 seconds later, at 7:12:06 PM, when Jeantel got Martin back on the phone for a final three minutes and 38 seconds (see the 13 minute mark of the T-Mobile testimony). When they reconnected Jeantel testified that Trayvon sounded tired, and at some point in the call he said he was back at his house. As quoted earlier:
JEANTEL: He sounded tired, sir.
WEST: And you don't know how far he may have run.
JEANTEL: No, sir. …
WEST: And you have this conversation with him for a couple of minutes, and then he says he sees the man again?
JEANTEL: Yes, sir. … He told me that he was close to him.
WEST: Right. At that point he [Trayvon] decided to approach this man and say, why are you following me?
JEANTEL: Yes, sir.
WEST: And he could have just run home if he wasn't there.
JEANTEL: He was already by his house. He told me.
WAPO phone-call timeline, with the two Martin-Jeantel phone calls added
The Washington Post created a graphic time-line of Zimmerman’s call to the police, and the subsequent 911 calls. I added timing marks and annotations for the Martin-Jeantel phone calls as well (click for larger image):
It is not clear how much of the struggle Jeantel heard before her phone disconnected, but it seems that the fight went on for at least about 80 seconds.
Zimmerman did NOT get out of his car against police advice
Note also that when the police dispatcher asked Zimmerman if he was following the suspect, Zimmerman was already out of his car. He did not get out of his car against police advice, which is another piece of disinformation that some leading press outlets are pushing (see NYT in addendum 2 below.
At the 2 minute mark in WAPO’s recording of Zimmerman’s call he says that the suspect is running. A few seconds later, at the 1:52 mark, Zimmerman can be heard getting out of his car and shutting the door (WAPO’s time stamps count down instead of up). Zimmerman’s breathing quickly starts to get heavy and there is wind noise and only then does the dispatcher asks Zimmerman if he is following Martin.
The dispatcher is clearly responding to audio evidence that Zimmerman is already out of his car and is pursuing on foot. Zimmerman says “yeap” and at 1:40 the dispatcher say “okay, we don’t need you to do that,” and Zimmerman says “okay.”
WAPO’s summary of the audio gets this sequence right:
Zimmerman got out of his truck to follow him. The dispatcher told him to stop, and at 7:13:38 p.m, the call ended.
Yay WAPO.
Addendum 2: Other counter-to-evidence media claims
The LA Times repeats the counter-to-evidence claim that Martin was walking home when the confrontation occurred, and adds the unsupported assertion that it was Zimmerman who confronted Martin:
Martin was visiting his father and his father’s girlfriend at a gated community in Sanford, Fla., when he went to a convenience store in the rain. Wearing a hoodie, he was on his way home when Zimmerman confronted him.
No, Martin was not on his way home, and even Trayvon’s friend Rachel acknowledges that the first words between them were Trayvon challenging Zimmerman: “Why are you following me for?”
The question by itself sounds like it could be Martin challenging Zimmerman for coming up behind him, but once you know that Martin has already been home the interpretation changes completely, suggesting that Martin, who had from the beginning been complaining about out Zimmerman watching him, had gone back out to challenge Zimmerman over it, just as he started to do when he first saw Zimmerman.
The question of who initiated the fatal confrontation is critical. If it was Zimmerman that tends to vitiate his claim of self-defense. Of course it would be legal for him to approach and question Martin, but even such fully legal behavior could raise the question of whether Martin felt legitimately threatened, possibly leaving Zimmerman with some responsibility for the turn to violence, which could tend to support a manslaughter conviction, making the LA Times summary of the case very harmful to Zimmerman, but it is also completely without support.
The New York Times backs up the claim that Zimmerman initiated the confrontation by adding the counter-to-evidence assertion that Zimmerman ignored police advice not to follow the suspect:
[Zimmerman] got out of his car — ignoring the advice of a police dispatcher — and followed Mr. Martin, setting off a confrontation that led to Mr. Martin’s death, prosecutors said.
Angry at Mr. Zimmerman and feeling threatened, Mr. Martin pushed him to the ground, punched him and slammed his head into the pavement, leaving visible wounds, defense lawyers said. Mr. Zimmerman, flat on his back, took out a gun and killed Mr. Martin. He told the police it was self-defense.
The police dispatcher did not advise Zimmerman not to get out of his car. Zimmerman was already out of his car when the dispatcher advised Zimmerman not to follow Martin, to which Zimmerman answered: “okay.” The Times is just lying here. See the timeline discussion in Addendum 2 above.
The Times tries to get away with their false depiction by putting it in the mouth of the prosecutor but the prosecution is not a neutral party. They are one side, in this case the losing side, of an adversarial contest. It is obviously inappropriate to base a one-line summary of the incident on just the prosecutor’s assertions. Zimmerman denies that he continued to follow Martin and all the evidence is on his side.
Zimmerman tells the dispatcher that his truck is parked by a “cut through,” which turns out to be the bend in Twin Trees Lane where a walkway cuts over to the eastern side of Retreat View Circle. He has been out of his car for 15 seconds when the dispatcher suggests he stop following Martin and Zimmerman says “okay,” but the wind noise continues for several more seconds. It isn't until 30 seconds after Zimmerman shut his car door the wind noise ends completely.
Thirty seconds of brisk walking from his truck would cover about 200 feet which would put Zimmerman somewhere near the top of the “T” where another walkway proceeds south from the cut-through, down through several back yards including, about 150 yards down, the back yard of the house where Martin was staying.
Zimmerman says he next walked all the way across the cut-through to try to find a street sign so he could tell the police where he was, then came back to the area of the T, and that is where he says Martin jumped out and attacked him.
It is possible that Zimmerman is lying and that he actually did walk down behind Martin’s house (though there is no evidence that he lied about anything), but as the alternate juror noted, that would still mean that Martin followed him back up to the T, still indicating that it was Martin who at the end closed the distance and initiated the confrontation.
Addendum 3: My semi-complete survey of errant media summaries of the facts
AP wrongly claims that Martin was headed home from the store when the fatal confrontation occurred, and claims with no evidence that it was Zimmerman who approached Martin:
The February 2012 confrontation began after Zimmerman observed Martin while driving in his neighborhood. Zimmerman called police and got out of his car and approached Martin, who was returning from a store while visiting his father and his father's fiancee at the same townhome complex where Zimmerman lived. Zimmerman did not testify at his trial, but he told investigators that he feared for his life as Martin straddled him and punched him during the fight.
WAPO doesn’t say that Martin was on his way home, but their one line summary of the incident at the beginning of their 21 paragraph story does show a glaring omission:
Zimmerman fatally shot Martin while the unarmed African American 17-year-old was walking in Sanford, Fla.
Martin was not “walking” when he was shot, he was sitting on top of Zimmerman smashing his head into the concrete. Only “below the fold,” more than halfway through the article, does the Post get around to mentioning that:
Zimmerman, a former volunteer neighborhood watchman who identifies as Hispanic, told police he was fighting for his life and fired at Martin in self-defense.
Civil rights leaders, as well as Martin’s relatives, took to the streets contending that the teen — who’d gone out to get a drink and Skittles from a Sanford, Florida, convenience store only to run into Zimmerman on his way back — might still be alive today if not for the color of his skin.
Martin and Zimmerman saw each other when Martin was on his way back home, but the evidence says they did not “run into each other” (have a physical confrontation) until Martin, after reaching home, went back out in search of Zimmerman.
This was the most decisive piece of evidence to come out of the trial and the one or two line summaries from the great majority of news outlets manage to directly contradict it.
The Islamofascists take the NYT line, using the false claim that Zimmerman went against the advice of the 911 dispatcher to claim that he initiated the confrontation:
The fateful night began when Zimmerman called the police after he claimed Martin was acting suspiciously by walking in a neighborhood where he was not recognized. Against the wishes of the police dispatcher, Zimmerman approached Martin, who was in town visiting his father’s fiancee in the gated community Zimmerman was patrolling. In the ensuing confrontation, Zimmerman shot and killed Martin, claiming self-defense after the teenager allegedly punched him.
Even the Washington Examiner’s conservative-leaning reporter Becket Adams got in on the disinformation, implying but not quite directly asserting the NYT line that Zimmerman ignored police advice to stop following Martin and barged ahead to initiate the fatal confrontation:
During a 911 call, Zimmerman described his suspicions of Martin, but a dispatcher suggested he not follow the teenager. Moments later the two came to blows. Physical evidence and the defendant's testimony indicate Martin was winning the fight when Zimmerman shot and killed him.
By saying that the struggle came “moments” after the dispatcher suggested that Zimmerman not follow Martin, Adams creates the imputation that Zimmerman did not heed the dispatcher’s advice, that he did continue after Martin and likely was the one who initiated the confrontation.
But the confrontation was not “moments” later, it was minutes later, during which interval the only available evidence says that Martin reached his house and then went back out to confront Zimmerman.
That Adams seems not to know this shows just how pervasive the media disinformation is. Reporters get as much disinformation from their colleagues as the rest of us do, making it difficult not to get swept along with the tide. Becket trusted other news outlets to tell him the truth, but as the majority of Americans already know, you can’t do that!
Honor roll
No press outlet mentioned the testimony that Martin had already been home before the fatal confrontation occurred but credit is due to Fox and NBC (!) for not positively contradicting this and other evidence.
Zimmerman has said he acted in self-defense when he shot the 17-year-old Martin during a confrontation inside a gated community in Sanford, Florida, just outside Orlando. Martin, who was black, was unarmed when he was killed.
Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges. He was charged with second-degree murder, and jurors also had the option of convicting him of the lesser charge of manslaughter. He said that he was acting in self-defense when he killed Martin, 17, during an altercation in a gated community in Sanford, Florida, on Feb. 26, 2012.
These are the only two examples I was able to find of summary statements that do not make crucial assertions that directly contradict key evidence.
Addendum 4: post-trial revelations from Rachel Jeanteal
In post-trial interviews Rachel Jeantel opined that Martin threw the first punch but said Zimmerman didn’t need to shoot him because Martin was only giving him a “whoop ass,” not trying to kill him. Why did Martin want to "whoop ass" Zimmerman, if not kill him? The likely motive can be seen in Martin calling Zimmerman a “cracka”:
PIERS MORGAN: C-R-A-C-K-A?
RACHEL JEANTEL: Yes, and that's a person who act like they are police.
It seems that Martin did not like to have someone monitoring his activity for possible criminal intent, which is not surprising for someone who’s Twitter handle was “no-limits-nigga.” Zimmerman was trying to put limits on him, trying to make sure he couldn’t get away with any crimes. That's not going to work for someone whose texts with friends indicate that drug use, fighting and stealing were all on his “no limits” agenda.
In the months before his death Trayvon had been suspended from school three times for drug use, graffiti, and burglary. There is also video of him orchestrating an arranged MMA-type fight, so what else was he going to do when a some “creepy ass cracker” tried to put limits on him? Jeantel tried to put it in street terms for Morgan.
She didn’t think the jury was racist, she just thought the problem with having so many whites on the jury was that they didn’t understand, as a black person would that, that Martin was not actually gong to kill Zimmerman, but just “whoop ass” beating, not even as bad as a more serious “bashing”:
MORGAN: Because of the make-up of the jury? Do you think it was just wrong that you had no black people on the jury at all?
JEANTEL: No, not that. They don't understand, they understand -- he was just bashed or he was killed. When somebody bashes like blood people, trust me, the area I live, that's not bashing. That's just called whoop ass.
In another interview with Marc Lamont Hill Jeantel said she thinks it was Martin who threw the first punch:
At some point a fight breaks out, who swings–who hits who first in your mind?” Jeantel replies “In my mind, I believe Trayvon. It was Trayvon…
She also repeated her view that Zimmerman didn’t have to shoot Martin because Martin wasn’t actually going to kill him:
Hill pointed out “George Zimmerman’s defenders would say well, if he didn’t pull out a gun, if Trayvon was whoopin’ his ass he could have killed George Zimmerman.” Jeantel replies “No. Trust me. That’s not killing. You have a big bruise, you don’t see inside your skin. You might have a little stitches.” Jeantel adds “He [Trayvon] would have fight him and run.”
Jeantel’s sense of Martin’s actions dovetails closely with what Zimmerman says happened, with the exception that Zimmerman says Martin told him that he was going to kill him.
The interview part of Jeantel’s story did not come out in the trial but it was all widely reported and it is all pointed to by what did come out in the trial: that Martin had been back by his father’s fiancée’s house before the fatal confrontation.
If he went back out in search of Zimmerman, Jeantel is telling us that the reason was to give Zimmerman at least a “whoop ass.” None of which keeps our agenda-driven media from writing as if no evidence ever came out and the verdict is a mystery. They are even still using the original misleading pictures of Trayvon Martin looking like an innocent child.
Addendum 5: the media still refuses to show Martin as he saw himself
Seventeen year old Trayvon Martin’s own chosen public image was aggressively thuggish. Here is his “no-limits-nigga” Twitter avatar, trying to look like a rap-gangster, showing off his removable gold-colored “grill”:
Here is Martin’s “T33ZY TAUGHT M3” Twitter avatar, where he tweeted, “Plzz shoot da #mf dat lied 2 u!”:
But the press still refuses to show Martin as he saw himself, instead using the same wholesome looking picture they used from the beginning to depict Trayvon as an innocent child murdered by a racist “white Hispanic.” Here is the still video frame that ABC selected to head their coverage of the DOJ announcement:
Here is how the 17 year old five-eleven, 158 pound Martin actually looked on the night of his death, approaching the counter at the 7-11 a half mile from the gated community where he was staying. This is no little boy:
Showing Martin’s imposing figure and his ugly self-image would help to de-mystify the jury verdict that upheld Zimmerman’s self-defense claim but our Democrat-dominated press obviously does not want this verdict de-mystified. Instead of explaining it they would rather un-explain it, creating a false narrative of black racial victimization that they believe works in their political favor.
