Media Bias

Media Bias

November 25, 2012

Media Bias

The importance of making critical evaluations of news stories come to play in the recent stories about Treyvon Martin & George Zimmerman case. This story is about a young black teenager and a neighborhood watchman that shot and killed Treyvon Martin. Many news stations reported the story showing pictures of both of them that had been taken years before the incident. Treyvon’s pictures showed him as an innocent boy and Zimmerman as an upset man and very angry in a mug shot. The media shows bias to both these men and seemed to be concerned with exaggeration rather than finding out the facts of the case at hand. The concerned they showed at the time the story broke on the news was leaning more toward a racially motivated incident. At that time the news was not completely clear or accurate and the investigative methods were not sufficient. The stories promoted the idea that Treyvon was an innocent young black kid who just so happened was out late at night coming from the store with a drink in his hand and a bag of skittles, and that Zimmerman was looking to serve justice to the neighborhood as watchman from unwanted activity because he thought that Martin looked suspicious from wearing a hoodie and out late at night. This alone seemed to promote prejudice and negative emotions from the audience from all over. The news media used bias deliberately ignoring the truth of the story regarding what type of people Martin and Zimmerman were. The story more so focused on Zimmerman being a trigger happy neighborhood watchman who decided to take matters in his own hands to do justice instead of waiting for the police to show up even after he reportedly called them. There have been countless of inaccuracies in the stories relating to this case and as time went by more and more things surfaced. There have been plenty of questionable assumptions when it comes to this case like, Zimmerman’s role in the events the night of the...