Martin and the Media

Over a year after the controversial, fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin on a dark, rainy February night, there has been no mass amounts of analysis of the situation, or live coverage, or even that many articles about the shooting. But the shooting, which was the biggest news story for the week or so after it happened, is no less important now than it was a year ago. The media, however, no longer prioritizes this important, almost monumental event in their news coverage. This, to me, is indicative of how the media shapes what news is and is not relevant - a pattern that has been the case for a while.

For those of you who don't know about the case, I will give a brief description that by no means is sufficient to sum up the story. One night, Trayvon Martin, a black teenager, was walking home from the store and was approached by a volunteer watchman. The watchman, George Zimmerman, thought Martin was acting suspicious is his wealthy, gated community. Zimmerman then fatally shot Martin (if you want to learn in more detail about the story, go here).

After the shooting, the news exploded with tons of different accounts of the story, supposed facts about the case, and certainly opinions about the motive of the shooting and if Zimmerman was justified in killing Trayvon. Though this case is very intricate and complex, I think that the media's response to the story is just as important as the story itself.

Dylan Stableford, Senior Media Reporter for Yahoo! thinks this case exposed the worst in the media: "The Trayvon Martin case has exposed some of the media's worst tendencies - selective editing, rushing to judgement, stoking anger for ratings and pageviews". The word "selective" indicates that the media only portrays certain parts of the case, in order to make the story seem more interesting to the audience. Tendencies like misrepresenting a story for "pageviews" and "ratings" are clearly horrible tactics the media uses to gain popularity.

And after a week, fua, as Oscar Wao would say. It is gone. No more constant coverage of the story, hourly updates, you will rarely even see any kind of story on it. Do you think that the media does a correct job covering all stories fair and equally? Is it legitimate for them to alter stories so they are more popular and make more money? I certainly do not think so, but please share your thoughts.