(By:  Jack Cashill)  The headline of the Orlando Sentinel on March 5 introduced a harsh note of  reality into the darkly comic opera the major media have been spinning around  the death of Trayvon Martin, “Lawyer: State’s main witness in George Zimmerman  murder case lied.”

That witness, Witness No. 8, Trayvon’s alleged 16-year-old sweetheart “Dee  Dee,” captivated the media when the story surfaced on March 20, 2012.

CNN covered it live. Anchor Kyra Phillips enthused about the “chilling new  perspective” added to the case by the testimony of this heartsick girl who was  on the phone with Trayvon when he was shot by George Zimmerman.

Phillips then introduced CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin.  Hostin had spoken  with a Martin family attorney and shared with the CNN audience what he had  learned.

“Trayvon Martin told his friend that someone was following him,” said Hostin. “He was nervous. He was concerned. She explained to him that he should run. He  told her he was not going to run, but he was going to walk quickly in an effort  to get away from the person that he thought was pursuing him.”

According to Hostin, Dee Dee heard Trayvon say to Zimmerman, “Why are you  following me?” Right after this exchange, “She felt that someone had pushed or  tackled Trayvon and, at that point, the phone call dropped.”

Hostin summarized that this “was the last conversation that Trayvon Martin  had with anyone, and it also, in my view, dispels the notion of self-defense.”

A few minutes later, Phillips cut to a live press conference staged by  Benjamin Crump, attorney for the Martin family. “She couldn’t even go to his  wake she was so sick,” Crump said of Dee Dee. “Her mother had to take her to the  hospital. She spent the night in the hospital. She is traumatized beyond  anything you could imagine.”

“She connects the dots,” Crump continued. “She completely blows Zimmerman’s  absurd defense claim out of the water. She says that Trayvon says he’s going to  try to lose him. He’s running trying to lose him. He tells her, I think I lost  him. So, he’s walking and then she says that he says very simply, oh, he’s right  behind me. He’s right behind me again.”

Not only was Dee Dee traumatized, but according to Crump, she was also a “minor.” Given that combination, Crump asked the media to respect her privacy.

In fact, the media did not need to be asked. Dee Dee, as filtered through  Crump, provided the confirmation they needed to establish the narrative they  wanted: racist thug – not quite white, but close enough – kills innocent  Skittles-bearing black boy.

This was Emmett Till all over again, proof for the black grievance industry  and the reporters who enabled it that nothing indeed had changed since Till’s  brutal murder in Mississippi nearly 60 years prior. Why question Dee Dee?

Of course, the blogosphere busted the “Dee Dee” concoction months ago – kudos  especially to the blogging collective at www.theconservativetreehouse.com – but the  major media, as is their custom with inconvenient facts, chose not to know any  more than they had to.

Unlike, say, Benghazi or Fast and Furious, however, the Zimmerman case is  playing out in the court of law, and not just in the court of public opinion.   Given this reality, the media cannot control the narrative as they might  otherwise do.

On Tuesday, Zimmerman’s attorneys had been expected to ask Dee Dee to produce  her medical records proving that she was in the hospital right after the  shooting.  Before the hearing, however, the state conceded there are no medical  records.

As the Sentinel reported, prosecutors “had to publicly acknowledge that their  star witness had lied under oath and had to answer questions about what they  intend to do about it.”

One reporter had the temerity to ask the state’s lead prosecutor, Bernie de  la Rionda, “Will you charge the 19-year-old Miami woman with perjury?” He  answered evasively, “You can all read the law and make your own decision.”

The sharp-eyed reader will notice that Dee Dee was casually referred to as a “19-year-old Miami woman.” As the Sentinel also acknowledged, Crump had told  reporters last March, “that she was 16 years old. In fact, she was 18 at the  time.”  (continue reading)