For many readers this is just another example of something already known. But many more are just waking up to the reality of the media for the first time. So bear with me.
The two primary news feeds are The Associated Press (AP) and Reuters News Agency (Reuters). Think of them as the information source at the top of the funnel. They pour the information into the news cycle and then various media outlets take the information and carve it up to sell to their readers/viewers based on their chosen demographic. So when you see either AP or Reuters directly attributed you should consider them a primary source of information.
Both AP and Reuters “shape” their stories with considerable bias under the guise of “hard news”. However, few people actually understand how non-objective the feeds from both agencies are. It really is just a guise. Sometimes they flat-out lie, yeah lie, as in -tell totally false stories- and people just don’t know it, because they still trust or accept the media as possessing “integrity”. It.Does.Not.
Here is another example, using their shaping of the Trayvon Martin case, to show how they do it and what eventually results from it. In this example they are lying. Lying. They are not only shaping the story, they are lying by omission.
(Reuters Headline) Trayvon evidence fails to answer who screamed for help:
(This is their actual headline stated as a fact)
ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) – An FBI expert found crucial evidence in the Trayvon Martin case was inconclusive, saying it was impossible to tell if the voice screaming for help belonged to the black Florida teenager or his shooter George Zimmerman just before the neighborhood watch captain pulled the trigger.
That detail came from a mass of evidence made public on Thursday in the case that sparked civil rights protests across the United States and debates over guns, self-defense laws and race relations in America.
The documents confirm numerous compelling facts and minutiae that have been debated at kitchen tables and on television sets across the country following the February 26 homicide when Zimmerman, 28, shot and killed the 17-year-old Martin.
Police initially declined to arrest Zimmerman, citing Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law, but a special prosecutor who was subsequently appointed charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder. Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty.
The nearly 200 pages of documents plus photographs, videos and audio recordings provide evidence that will be seized upon by both Zimmerman’s supporters and his detractors, including the revelation that Martin had traces of marijuana in his system and a witness who described the teen as beating on Zimmerman in the style of mixed martial arts.
But what may be the central point of contention – who screamed for help? – goes tantalizingly unanswered.
If it was Zimmerman, it would confirm his story that he pleaded for assistance against the teenager who was brutally beating him. If it was Martin, it could establish Zimmerman was the aggressor who shot an unarmed teenager and would be a major component of a case for second-degree murder.
Relatives of both Zimmerman and Martin swear it was their kin who was pleading for his life.
The cries for help were silenced by a single shot from Zimmerman’s Kel Tec 9mm handgun but not before they were recorded on phone calls that neighbors made to police to report a struggle between two men in their gated community in the central Florida city of Sanford.
“Critical listening and digital signal analysis further revealed that the screaming voice of the 911 call is of insufficient voice quality and duration to conduct a meaningful voice comparison with any other voice samples,” concluded Kenneth Marr, a specialist with the FBI’s digital evidence laboratory in Quantico, Virginia.
Of 18.82 seconds of screaming in the distance, only 2.53 seconds went uninterrupted by the conversation between the woman who called 911 and the dispatcher, Marr said in his report.
Moreover, the audio sample was “produced under an extreme emotional state,” the report said, making it difficult to analyze.
Zimmerman supporters can point to a separate Sanford police report within the documents that says Martin’s father, Tracy Martin, told investigators the screams did not belong to his son when he heard the recordings two days after the shooting.
Martin has since told reporters he was uncertain at that time, but that when he heard an enhanced recording on March 16 he was convinced it was his son calling for help. The boy’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, also insists the cries come from Trayvon.
Zimmerman’s father and brother have been equally adamant it was George’s voice they heard.
“That is absolutely, positively George Zimmerman,” father Robert Zimmerman said in an interview with prosecutors on March 19. “Myself, my wife, family members and friends know that is George Zimmerman. There is no doubt who is yelling for help. It is absolutely my son.” (there is more but not needed)
So if you read that, and you did not know better, you would think ‘ok, the investigators don’t know who screamed for help’, right? Wrong.
What Reuters is doing here is ignoring the most important aspect of the entire set of evidence surrounding who cried out for help, THE WITNESSES. Yeah, two witnesses who specifically stated it was George Zimmerman calling out for help.
Briefly in the Reuters report there is a mention of the witness interviewed 90 minutes after the shooting who testified that he saw Martin straddling George Zimmerman on the ground and violently battering him “MMA” style. However, they selectively omit the part where the witness also said Zimmerman was the one screaming for help.
In addition a second witness also described a person on the ground with another straddling him and throwing punches. The man on the bottom was yelling for help, the witness told police.
For some reason the two eye-witness accounts which specifically state Zimmerman was crying out for help did not make the Reuters report on the incident. Again look at their headline “evidence fails to answer who screamed for help“.
No, actually the evidence completely answers the question. It is only the absence of reporting the totality of the evidence which fails to answer ‘who screamed for help’.
It is the intentional omission of evidence that “fails to answer who screamed for help”.
For everyone who looks at “all the evidence” the answer is obvious.
Reuters frames their story as if, well, they are intentionally hiding this evidence from the public, to make people think this question is unanswered. Huh, now why would they do that?…..
When you follow Reuters method of manipulation you end up with this analogous example: If a stranger said she saw you at McDonald’s eating a cheeseburger; and your neighbor said he also saw you eating a cheeseburger at McDonald’s; well…….
….. as long as the CCTV system at McDonald’s is broken then you can say “evidence fails to show that I ate at McDonald’s”.
