George Zimmerman

CNN's Piers Morgan invoked the death of Trayvon Martin to support his case for gun control, but the brother of Martin's accused shooter George Zimmerman had a retort ready on Tuesday's Piers Morgan Tonight.

"You would accept, would you not, that if your brother had not gone out armed with a gun that day, Trayvon Martin would be celebrating his 18th birthday today," Morgan first pressed Zimmerman.  [Video coming soon. Audio here.]

Another black teenager was killed in Florida last week by an older, non-black assailant, and the media - just as they did in the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case - are predictably taking sides before all the facts are in.

MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry did her part Saturday saying in a piece about the incident, "This is no country for young black men" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In March, NewsBusters broke the story about NBC's Today show airing an edited audiotape of George Zimmerman's 911 call the day he shot Trayvon Martin in Florida.

On Thursday, the New York Post reported Zimmerman is suing the Peacock Network.

Bill Maher made a truly disgusting comment on NBC's Tonight Show Wednesday.

After host Jay Leno asked who he thought the mystery guest speaker would be at the Republican National Convention in Tampa Thursday night, Maher quickly replied without any hesitation, “George Zimmerman” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

"Doesn't Trayvon Martin actually have the right to kill George Zimmerman if George Zimmerman is stalking him and the police have told him not to stalk him?"

This question was actually asked Tuesday on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight by schlockumentary filmmaker Michael Moore during a discussion about gun laws in the wake of the shootings in Aurora, Colorado (video follows with transcript and commentary):

I'm not sure what he meant by it, but HBO's Bill Maher said Saturday on Twitter that Trayvon Martin killer George Zimmerman "is Sean Hannity's missing white girl."

One gets the sense that along with much of the liberal media, Maher wasn't pleased with Zimmerman's interview on Fox News last week:

This year, as always, Florida is a crucial swing state. Because of that, the liberal media is doing all it can to gin up Democratic base voters, attempting to energize them for the November election by bashing Florida's conservative Republican governor Rick Scott and his attempt to clean up voter rolls of noncitizens, who by definition are not allowed to cast votes. The liberal media, particularly hyper-partisan MSNBC, has also attacked efforts in other states to require voter ID. Florida has had a photo ID law since 2002.

The tragic February shooting death of Trayvon Martin also led the Left to work up attacks on the Sunshine State's Stand Your Ground laws. But new polling shows that the media's attacks are just not working. Sure, Gov. Scott himself is personally unpopular, but the policies he's pursuing are, reports Steve Bousquet of the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times (emphasis mine):

When George Zimmerman shot black teenager Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, on February 26, the media were quick to accuse the 28-year-old Hispanic of being a racist, but new information gathered by the FBI indicates that Zimmerman did not shoot the youth because of his race.

Dozens of friends, coworkers and neighbors indicated that the neighborhood watch volunteer became involved in an altercation with Martin because of the “hoodie” or hooded sweatshirt the youth was wearing. Indeed, the FBI report released on Thursday included an interview with Sanford Police Detective Christopher Serino, the lead investigator in the case, who said that members of local gangs, who call themselves "Goons," often wear hoodies.

Bill Maher on Friday made another in a long line of disgusting remarks about Mitt Romney and Republicans being racist.

In the concluding segment of HBO's Real Time, the host encouraged Romney to choose Trayvon Martin's assailant George Zimmerman as his vice presidential candidate to "personify [his] campaign theme of 'I Think The Black Guy’s Up To No Good'" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Last night (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), yours truly questioned how the Associated Press could have two identically worded stories with different headlines -- "Cache of evidence in shooting, still huge gaps" and "Amid evidence cache in Martin case, questions nag" -- posted at its national site.

This morning, Paul Colford, Director of AP Media Relations posted a comment at BizzyBlog which included a request that I note his communication with me at NewsBusters. Mr. Colford's note and my response follow the jump:

Update: An AP official has responded to this post. That response, and my reply, are here.

Note: A sentence which erroneously reported the Eastern Time Zone equivalent of a story at the Kansas City Star has been removed.

The Associated Press appears to have done something unusual in its coverage of the the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case on Monday. Two identically worded stories with differing headlines are still at the AP's national site.

It is more than a little odd that the story with the earlier headline ("Cache of evidence in shooting, still huge gaps") is still present. The headline grossly mischaracterizes the nature of the publicly released data. The same story with a different and more accurate headline ("Amid evidence cache in Martin case, questions nag") is also still there. I don't think I've ever seen this happen at AP, especially not for over 24 hours (the time stamps on the two stories are both late Friday afternoon). Graphics with the two examples follow the jump.

It's becoming clearer and clearer that no matter what evidence comes out concerning the Trayvon Martin shooting in Sanford, Florida, America's media will support him.

On HBO's Real Time Friday, host Bill Maher actually said, "I just want to say if I had a son he would not look like Trayvon Martin, but I hope he would act like him" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Since that awful Sunday in Sanford, Florida, back in February, the media have shown time and time again they don't understand how the American justice system works.

Take ABC legal analyst Dan Abrams who on Thursday's Nightline said, "So even if Zimmerman was on his back, even if he was losing a fight, he still has a lot of explaining to do and is going to have to prove that Trayvon Martin was the initial aggressor" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The New York Times's Serge Kovaleski reported from Sanford, Fla. on the many "missteps" in the police investigation into the fatal shooting of black youth Treyvon Martin by George Zimmerman: "In Martin Case, Police Missteps Add to Challenges to Find Truth." Of course, the Times and the rest of the media have made plenty of their own mistakes in covering the volatile case.

Kovaleski's front-page story Thursday glided over a scrap of data pointing toward vindication for Zimmerman: "...One witness, though, provided information to the police that corroborated Mr. Zimmerman’s account of the struggle, according to a law enforcement official."

In his first public response to the Trayvon Martin shooting, President Obama famously said in March, "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."

CNN legal analyst Mark NeJame, after uncovering a picture of George Zimmerman's relatives during his investigation of this matter, told Piers Morgan Thursday, "If President Obama has indicated that his son would have looked like Trayvon Martin, then most respectfully, if you look at these pictures, his grandparents and great-grandparents would have looked a lot like George Zimmerman's grandparents and great-grandparents (video follows with transcript and commentary):

"It is inconceivable that had a white mob set upon two black Americans the media would sit it out."

So said Fox News's Bill O'Reilly Monday about the media's almost total silence about a white couple that was attacked by a crowd of young African-Americans three weeks ago in Norfolk, Virginia (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Another head has rolled behind NBC’s iron curtain as the troubled, so-called "news" network continues to drop the guillotine on those responsible for the deliberately misleading edits to Zimmerman’s 9-1-1 call.

NBC has now fired three people from two different offices over at least two different edits of George Zimmerman’s now infamous 9-1-1 call prior to the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. Both edits were clearly designed to portray Zimmerman as a racist while raising tensions in an already volatile situation.  This latest firing from NBC once again goes unexplained.  NBC’s actions vindicate the Media Research Center’s original point that NBC's two-sentence (non)apology was an insult, and that this is a network out of control.

CBS's Bob Schieffer ended Sunday's Face the Nation by disgracefully connecting the 20th anniversary of the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles to Trayvon Martin.

After showing videos of the King beating as well as the aftermath of the criminal trial, Schieffer stated - with a black and white picture of the Sanford teenager on the screen - "When the Trayvon Martin case came to public attention this year, King said the screams on those tapes reminded him of his own" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It's been several weeks since NBC disgraced itself by repeatedly airing doctored audio of George Zimmerman talking to a 9-1-1 dispatcher but the network has yet to apologize on the air, hoping instead that its paltry efforts of firing a lone producer and conducting an investigation into the matter but not releasing a report to the public would be sufficient.

Incredibly, it was a New York Times columnist, David Carr, who decided to confront the network on how that just isn't enough. NBC News president Steve Capus admitted his efforts have been insufficient but tried to spin away why his network hasn't bothered to tell viewers about its propagation of fraudulent journalism.

Geraldo Rivera on Friday accused MSNBC anchors of not caring at all about the evidence concerning the shooting of Trayvon Martin and instead "cheerleading for the conviction of George Zimmerman."

Appearing on Fox New's The O'Reilly Factor, Rivera specifically pointed his finger at Martin Bashir, Chris Matthews, Lawrence O'Donnell, Al Sharpton, and Ed Schultz (video follows with transcript and commentary:

Maybe it's time for MSNBC's Chris Matthews to retire.

On Friday's Hardball, the 66-year-old host actually said that people's view of the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case is impacted by "so much history ever since the first slave arrived in the United States" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

NBC incessantly talked about race and racism after the Trayvon Martin shooting, but on Monday race took a back seat to guns as the problem at the heart of the case. On Monday's Today show, host Matt Lauer cited comedian Bill Cosby and asked if the media has focused too much on race "when guns are the real problem?"

Thus the liberal discussion shifted from race to guns as the Today's Professionals panel responded in the affirmative. Attorney Star Jones avowed that "the issue is guns."And citing his own business experience, former CNBC host Donny Deutsch insisted "when you go after the guns you're solving problems." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Bill Maher on Friday told what many would consider a rather racist joke.

After commenting at the beginning of HBO's Real Time that it was Friday the 13th, the host warned his audience, "If a black cat crosses your path it is bad luck – except in Florida where you’re allowed to shoot it" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Last week, CNN had to walk back its assumption that George Zimmerman uttered a racial slur in his 9-1-1 call, and now an affidavit from the prosecution in the case says no racist words were voiced.

CNN first suggested on March 21, according to its "sophisticated" audio editing, that Robert Zimmerman said "f***ing coons" on his 9-1-1 call. But the network had to throw water on that assumption once they re-assessed the audio clip, changing Zimmerman's words from "coons" to "cold." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

NBC's apology for its malicious Zimmerman 911 audio edits is woefully inadequate, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell noted on last night's "Hannity." For instance, the network has not given an on-air apology, only a written apology in a press release. What's more, the network has not disclosed the name of the producer it fired, even as it insists his error was not malicious in intent.

That's why, "we've gone to Congress now," Bozell noted, pointing out that NBC's parent company Comcast is looking for approval of a deal with Verizon that raises "potential antitrust issues." "We're asking them what about the public trust?" the Media Research Center founder noted. "This network simply just can't be trusted," he concluded. [See video below page break]

Some reporters have been so determined to prove that George Zimmerman's shooting of Trayvon Martin on February 26 was due to racism that they've been willing to go to virtually any length to find evidence that supports their claim, even against the recommendations of fellow journalists not wanting to rush beyond the evidence.

The case of CNN's rush to promote the idea that Zimmerman had uttered a racial slur during the call is perhaps the best example of this.

The presumption of innocence is a cornerstone of Anglo-American jurisprudence, so surely well-educated British citizen Martin Bashir knows better than to declare in his closing "Clear the Air" commentary on his April 11 MSNBC program that with charges pending against Sanford, Florida resident "George Zimmerman will have to justify his actions in a court of law." "From the very outset, virtually every aspect of this case has raised serious questions about Mr. Zimmerman's actions and the story that followed," Bashir added, before rattling off the as-yet-unproven but widely reported notion that Zimmerman continued to pursue Trayvon Martin on foot after the 911 dispatcher counseled him not to.

But wait, there's more, as Bashir used the opportunity to not only convict Zimmerman but virtually finger gun rights groups that have lobbied for Stand Your Ground laws as unindicted co-conspirators:

Oh the delicious irony.

On ABC's The View Tuesday, as co-host Whoopi Goldberg supported Saturday's call by CNN's Don Lemon for reporters to say the N-word when quoting folks that have, the censors actually bleeped her when she said the word herself (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):