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http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20130729_Zimmerman_case_hurt_media_s_image.html

Zimmerman case hurt media's image GARY W. GREEN / Monday, July 29, 2013, 1:07 AM

(snip)

Unfortunately, the press has done little to improve that image with its coverage of Trayvon Martin's death. Instead, reporters took a tragic situation and sensationalized it, igniting racial tensions rather than focusing on what many see as serious gaps in our gun and self-defense laws.

(snip)

The problems began almost immediately. The first Associated Press article on the incident, published March 8, described a situation in which Martin had "gone to a convenience store to buy some Skittles and was returning home when he was confronted by an armed man who was head of the local neighborhood watch." Consider the image of being "confronted by an armed man" and compare that with events as we now understand them to have unfolded.

The article pointed out that Martin was black and his killer was white. This was crucial to a story that CBS News' Charlie Rose gravely warned earlier that day had "serious racial overtones" - so crucial that when Zimmerman's family revealed that he was Hispanic, some media, including the New York Times, stressed that he was a white Hispanic.

Certainly that is a valid description. The Census Bureau classifies Hispanic origin as distinct from race. But the media typically do not. In fact, during the year prior to Zimmerman's mention in the Times, one would be hard-pressed to find the paper refer to any other individual as both white and Hispanic. Some news organizations rightly pointed out that Hispanic Americans could also be guilty of racial profiling. But even when his father revealed that Zimmerman grew up in a multiracial family and that his great-grandfather was black, the media - like Ishmael describing Moby Dick - continued to obsess about his whiteness.

At every turn the media seemed to willingly pull facts out of context to sensationalize the story and amplify the racial angle: The first publicized photos depicted a 14-year-old Martin, three years younger and smaller than at the time of the shooting. Zimmerman was shown in an orange prison jumpsuit. These were, at the very least, prejudicial to public understanding.

[Newsweek mug shot photos?]

When Zimmerman's 911 calls were released, NBC inexplicably edited the tape, stringing together separate statements in order to portray Zimmerman as saying: "This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black." A CNN analysis suggested that Zimmerman had used a racial epithet under his breath during that 911 call. The network later retracted the allegation.

Instances such as these could easily be attributed to simple error if that error did not consistently fall in one direction. No reports featured tape improperly edited to cast Zimmerman in a good light. Instead, positive stories about Zimmerman received little play. Few journalists explored reports that Zimmerman tutored African American boys after school. Fewer still followed up on CNN's story about Zimmerman's vocal criticism of the Sanford Police Department in the beating of a homeless black man.

A recent Gallup poll showed that 60 percent of Americans no longer trust the media to report the news "fully, accurately, and fairly." Distorted coverage of Martin's killing has done nothing to improve that trust. Instead of informing the nation and leading us toward debate of the laws that allowed this to happen, the media largely inflamed the people, reopened racial wounds, and drove us further apart. It did not have to be this way.

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if that error did not consistently fall in one direction.

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http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4379

Justice Delayed (Rachel Smolkin)

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The hometown paper, Durham's 36,815-weekday circulation Herald-Sun, has been vilified by defense attorneys and media observers for coverage that they say tended to be superficial and unsophisticated on its best days, biased, misleading and even flat-out wrong on its worst.

An April 25, 2007, story in the Chronicle, the Duke student paper, probed the Herald-Sun's more than 400 articles and editorials on the case and detailed sensational commentary, omissions and inaccuracies, including misrepresenting North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper's comments on CBS' "60 Minutes" shortly after he declared Seligmann, Finnerty and Evans "innocent" of all charges. In the headline and lead of a page-one story April 16, the Herald-Sun reported that Cooper had said the "racial strain" on the community factored into his declaration of innocence; Cooper, however, had said nothing of the sort. (A subsequent correction downplayed the magnitude of the error.)

A March 28, 2006, Herald-Sun editorial declared: "There's no question the student-athletes were probably guilty of all the usual offenses--underage drinking, loud partying, obnoxious behavior. But the allegations of rape bring the students' arrogant frat-boy culture to a whole new, sickening level." The next day, a particularly inflammatory column about the "victim" by John McCann asserted: "I don't fault the girl for not keeping up with the news and the history of rich brats who get drunk and don't know how to act... Those animals reportedly kicked her around like a dog."

Stuart Taylor, a National Journal columnist who was among the first to proclaim a miscarriage of justice in the case and is now writing a book, "Until Proven Innocent," due out in September, describes the Herald-Sun's coverage as "absolutely wretched just about every single day for the past year." His coauthor, KC Johnson, a history professor at Brooklyn College and a "procedure wonk," tracked the case exhaustively on his Durham-In-Wonderland blog (durhamwonderland.blogspot.com). Johnson wrote that the Herald-Sun "combined plodding pro-Nifong editorials with 'news' articles whose one-sided nature borders on journalistic fraud, topped off by a pattern of simply ignoring newsworthy items that can't be framed in pro-Nifong terms."

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[Smolkin, cont.]

One prominent guest on Grace's show and others was Wendy Murphy, an adjunct professor at the New England School of Law and a former assistant district attorney in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. On April 10, 2006, after defense attorneys announced that DNA results found no links to the athletes, Murphy told Grace, "Look, I think the real key here is that these guys, like so many rapists--and I'm going to say it because, at this point, she's entitled to the respect that she is a crime victim."

Emerging questions about the investigation did not prompt Murphy to reassess. Appearing on "CNN Live Today" on May 3, 2006, she posited, "I'd even go so far as to say I bet one or more of the players was, you know, molested or something as a child." On June 5, 2006, MSNBC's Tucker Carlson asserted, relying on a Duke committee report, that the lacrosse team was generally well-behaved. Rejoined Murphy: "Hitler never beat his wife either. So what?" She later added: "I never, ever met a false rape claim, by the way. My own statistics speak to the truth."

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[Smolkin, cont.]

Fifteen days after defense attorneys announced the DNA results, Time magazine's Jeninne Lee-St. John was still advancing the race/class storyline, positing that the black mother's accusations of rape against "generally privileged, younger white men conjures up memories of that classic American sex story: the pretty female slave being summoned up to the big house to sexually satisfy the master."

On April 19, 2006, after Seligmann and Finnerty were charged, the Christian Science Monitor published a story headlined "Duke lacrosse case: No DNA, but old-fashioned sleuthing." It stated: "Tests that pinpoint humans' unique genetic fingerprints are often overplayed as a forensic tool, experts say.

[What experts? Have they names? (Was Neufeld working the case more than was known?) Was this part of a PR campaign to counter the DNA results? Was somebody hard at work, working the media? Don't know; just questions; but it is an aspect that should be looked into, IMHO.]

Especially in violent crimes, old-fashioned gumshoe investigations, convincing witnesses, and believable testimony still rule the jury room, they add."

[Again, who is "they"? What is their track record? What are their credentials for downplaying DNA test results?
After all, the real "expert", Nifong, claimed that DNA testing was "bulletproof"; and the NTO claimed that DNA tets would "immediately rule out the innocent". It would appear the judge accepted that reasoning. So who are these "experts" who are disputing that?]

The story did not delve into whether the Duke case had convincing witnesses, nor did it contain any response from defense lawyers.

On May 24, 2006--12 days after defense attorneys said a second round of DNA tests found no matches to any lacrosse players--the Washington Post's Lynne Duke wrote a piece headlined "The Duke Case's Cruel Truth." Fronting the Style section, it began: "She was black, they were white, and race and sex were in the air. But whatever actually happened that March 13 night at Duke University--both the reported rape and its surrounding details are hotly disputed--it appears at least that the disturbing historic script of the sexual abuse of black women was playing out inside that lacrosse team house party."