Do You Trust ‘THE NEWS’? From The Market Ticker

NBC Is The Skittle Network

Are you*****ed off yet? You will be.

NBC News is being excoriated in some circles – with competitor Fox News Channel leading the charge – for selectively editing audio of the 911 call placed by George Zimmerman just before he killed Trayvon Martin.

Yep. They got caught too.

In the NBC segment, Zimmerman says: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.”

So Zimmerman is a racist, right? Uh, not quite.

The full version, though, unfolds like this:

Zimmerman: “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.”

911 operator: “Okay. And this guy, is he white black or Hispanic?”

Zimmerman: “He looks black.”

What do you call it when the media invents things? That's not reporting folks.

Maybe NBC is trying to incite a race riot. Or maybe it's just pure slander. Incidentally there's no defense available to a news organization (or any journalist) when they intentionally do something like this. Zimmerman ought to consider suing their ass to somewhere beyond the orbit of Mars.

More to the point, however, this sort of invention of a conversation that never happened by splicing together two pieces of tape means that nothing the media is telling you can be accepted as true without independent proof irrespective of which side of the debate the alleged "report" is on.

While we're at it I have some more questions, but I'll keep it to just two for right now. Both would help understand what actually happened that night, and neither, to my knowledge, has been investigated and reported upon.

Let's ask "why not?"

First, ABC reported that Trayvon's body was kept in the morgue as a "John Doe" for three days. However, Martin's father called the Sanford police department the morning after the shooting when he noted his son was not home, and they came out and made the identification. Where did that discrepancy come from and was ABC trying to intentionally smear the Sanford police department? There is an adjunct question to this -- we know Trayvon had a cellphone with him because he was allegedly talking with his girlfriend. Were there numbers with the tags "Mom" and "Dad" in it? Wouldn't you have expected the police to look over what was inventoried, assuming that Trayvon wasn't carrying ID and call any obvious contact number such as one tagged "Mom" or "Dad"? Now maybe the cellphone had a passcode on it or something similar, but there's an obvious open question on the delay in identification and contact with the parents, and it deserves an answer.

Second, Trayvon Martin was allegedly out at night, on foot and in a rainstorm getting iced tea and skittles. Ok, here's the address where the altercation took place from the police report:

2381 Retreat View Cir
Sanford, FL 32771

Now go to Google Maps and type in that address.

Next, find me a convenience store -- you know, a place to buy skittles and an iced tea. Just type in "convenience store" in the "Search Nearby" box.

Where's the closest one and how far is it on foot?

In a rainstorm, for a bag of skittles and can of iced tea, both ways? Possible? Sure. Plausible? That story ought to be able to be checked, and rather easily -- all convenience stores these days have video recorders.

So has anyone checked to see if indeed the deceased hiked the anywhere from 2-4 miles to and from one of the half-dozen convenience stores in the general area (none closer than about a mile on foot, incidentally, and all somewhat of a pain in the ass to get to due to what appears to be a limited access highway -- 417 -- between the location and the stores which would force you to walk quite a bit further than you could go "as the crow flies".)

These are pretty basic questions. In fact the closest convenience store is a Murphy USA; to reach the others north of the location (the ones south are a LOT further) you'd have to walk past it, so it's highly likely that's the store -- if the story of going out for skittles and iced tea holds up.

Does it? Has anyone checked?

We'll start there; I've got more queued up.