The smiling face of cable TV’s female ex-prosecutors!

THURSDAY, JULY 25, 2013

As goes Nancy Grace, so goes Sunny Hostin: Sunny Hostin is very telegenic. On TV, she’s also exceptionally personable, charming, extremely pleasant.

That’s what made her recent performances on CNN so puzzling. Hostin, a former federal prosecutor, served on Anderson Cooper’s legal panel during the Zimmerman trial. She was on the air every night.

Hostin is exceptionally pleasant. She also felt that every bit of evidence, bar none, pointed directly to Zimmerman’s guilt.

This made for a strange combination.

Nancy Grace is the patron saint of cable TV’s female former prosecutors. That said, Grace is visibly semi-crazy. She even has an iconic story about how she got that way. (In 1979, her fiancé was murdered.)

Hostin isn’t like that. That’s what makes her relentless judgments seem so strange.

How strange were those judgments during the Zimmerman trial? Below, you see a CNN transcript from all the way back in March 2012, when the case had just gone national.

Recordings of the 911 calls had been released two or three days earlier. Speaking with Brooke Baldwin, Hostin gets confused as to what clothing Martin and Zimmerman were wearing.

In fact, she gets the clothing reversed. Zimmerman was wearing red that night. Mistakenly, Hostin thinks it was Martin.

But so what? For people in the Nancy Grace mold, everything proves the accused party's guilt. Hostin is sure that that her bungled evidence proves that she just “heard a murder:”

BALDWIN (3/19/12): Sunny, I just want to bring you in. As a former federal prosecutor, what's your reaction, just visceral reaction in listening to those multiple calls to 911?

HOSTIN: I'm saddened, Brooke. I'm saddened not only as a former prosecutor, but as a mother. But the bottom line is, it completely disproves this self-defense claim. It tells me that this child was murdered in cold blood and there are several witnesses to that murder.

You know, I heard so many people in law enforcement talk about the fact that the, you know, that there aren't any witnesses to disprove this self-defense claim made by Zimmerman. Well, that is not true. First of all, prosecutors try homicide cases, Brooke, every single day without the victim, OK, because the victim is dead. And so to say that the self-defense claim cannot be disproved, for law enforcement officials in Florida to say that, I think is just so ludicrous. And I'm angered by what I've heard and I'm saddened.

BALDWIN: I hear the anger but I just have to ask, what is it about these calls? What did you hear that says cold-blooded murder?

HOSTIN: Yes, and I've heard all of the calls, actually, because they've all been released, in addition to the few that we've played.

BALDWIN: Right.

HOSTIN: And the bottom line is, you hear a warning shot, Brooke, and then you hear a voice pleading and a cry. And then you hear another voice and you hear the pleading stop. So that— And you also have these other people saying that the man in the white shirt—which is what Zimmerman was wearing, we know that Trayvon Martin was wearing a red sweatshirt—that the man in the white shirt was on top of the other person. And so that tells me that he was on top of this boy, young boy, not even an adult, an unarmed young boy, takes a step back and shoots him in the chest.

You cannot avail yourself of a self-defense claim when you are the first aggressor, you start a fight, even if you're losing it. You cannot avail yourself of that.

And so in hearing all of these tapes, I’m convinced that I’ve heard a murder. That, and a murderer that is walking around our streets free without being arrested. And so I’m just—I’m horrified.

Hostin says she heard two shots. In fact, only one shot was fired. But Hostin proceeds with the lurid tale involving the alleged warning shot, followed by cold-blooded murder.

More strikingly for present purposes, note what she says about the clothing the two parties were wearing that night.

Plainly, Hostin had the basic evidence mixed up at this point. In fact, it was Zimmerman who was wearing red that night. Somehow, Hostin had it in her head that Martin was wearing red.

(On March 14, 2012, she had said on CNN that Martin was wearing "a red hoodie" that night.)

Hostin had the basic facts inverted in her mind. But remember the basic rule: For people in the Nancy Grace mold, every single bit of evidence proves the accused party’s guilt!

In this case, Hostin mistakenly thinks she has heard two shots, and she has the evidence of the clothing reversed. But so what? This bungled evidence convinces her that she has just “heard a murder.”

Everybody makes mistakes. But in the world of cable ex-prosecutors, it doesn’t really matter who was wearing red. By the basic rules of the game, everything points to the accused party’s guilt. Everything proves that he did it.

Does cable feature male ex-prosecutors so absurdly one-sided? There are quite a few female ex-prosecutors who seem to have followed in Grace’s wake. We can’t think of a male ex-prosecutor who works from such an unmistakable template on a cable program. (Cable producers may prefer this kind of casting.)

By the way, did Hostin ever correct her misstatement about what the clothing help prove? She was on CNN every day in March 2012, often on several programs in the course of the day. Using Nexis, we find no sign that she ever corrected her groaning mistake about the two parties’ clothing—a mistake which led her to say, on the air, that she had just “heard a murder.”

Nancy Grace has convicted quite a few innocent people in her years on TV. During the Elizabeth Smart case, she got an innocent party thrown into jail, where he died of a medical condition.

(Later, Smart was found—and with her, the real guilty party.)

That said, Nancy Grace seems crazy. Hostin is a puzzle. What’s it like to be so outwardly pleasant and yet to be so deeply devoted to getting folk thrown into prison, preferably for life?

Hostin had the clothing reversed. Like everything else on the face of the earth, this proved the accused party did it!

Later that week: Later that week, Hostin started saying that the Sanford police hadn’t kept Zimmerman’s clothing for forensic testing. This became a standard claim on the various hang-him-high channels.

This was proof that the Sanford police had just been screwing around!

Uh-oh! As it turned out, the Sanford police had kept Zimmerman’s clothing. Repeatedly, Hostin traced her false claim to the Martin attorneys.

False. As in, not true.

By George, we think she’s got it!

THURSDAY, JULY 25, 2013

The problem with Weiner’s wee-wee: In this morning’s New York Times, Gail Collins just keeps discussing Anthony Weiner’s wee-wee.

Last night, cable spilled with discussions of Weiner’s mental state and the motives of his wife. In today’s New York Times, those motives are limned by New York City women in this news report.

Elsewhere on cable, piles of piffle are being peddled about the new Brit, Baby Boy George. You can say good-bye to those discussions of race and justice we were going to have!

This morning, the New York Times prints six letters about Weiner’s high-profile wee-wee. By George, we think this last lady’s got it:

LETTER TO THE NEW YORK TIMES (7/25/13): Anthony D. Weiner’s continued presence in the mayoral campaign is preventing a discussion of the real issues: schools, housing, quality of life and so on. By staying in the race, he’s getting what he thrives on: attention. But the very city he claims to want to lead is getting no attention at all. He should bow out, and do so gracefully, while he still can.

M— A—
New York, July 24, 2013

By George, we think she’s got it!

Would there ever have been a discussion about New York’s schools, housing or quality of life? Color us unconvinced.

That said, the letter writer gets to the heart of the current problem.

Our society is hanging on to its sanity by a slender thread. The tribalism of the times has virtually destroyed the ability to have a sane discussion of any topic.

Always, though, the cable talkers are happy to find a new distraction. Weiner’s wee-wee and Baby Boy George have showed them blessed escape from discussion of serious topics.

Our society is barely able to hold a discussion of any topic. People like Weiner are guaranteed to terminate any last hope.

The cable clowns are always eager to find a new distraction. In 2001, it was Gary Condit. The year after that, it was Elizabeth Smart.

They always pretend there’s a point to their chatter, a serious topic they are exploring. But there isn’t a point and there isn’t a topic. Once you tear away the veil, they are discussing shark attacks. They live for such distractions.

Our intellectual culture is on life support. Wee-wees like Weiner’s can kill it.

The history of distraction: The discussion of Condit and Chandra Levy was still a powerful presence on cable right through the evening of September 10, 2001.

The next morning, the World Trade Center was hit. That ended all discussion of Condit and Chandra Levy.

The pundits swore they had learned their lesson, that they would never be silly again. But they are very silly people, and they're paid large sums.

Last night, Chris got mad about all the sex and Lawrence kept talking about Gennifer Flowers, the woman who seems to haunt his dreams. He even played tape of his lady love, who once chronicled the Clintons’ murders for Chris, right there on The Channel.

To some extent, they’re paid to do this. But to a large extent, they’re just broken-souled losers.

Make no mistake, they’re genuine crackpots. These people are actually nuts.

Note: We’re changing the headline!

THURSDAY, JULY 25, 2013

On our current series: We’re changing the headline on our current set of reports.

When we started, we had expected to stress the way the press corps took dictation from attorney Benjamin Crump in the early reporting of the killing of Trayvon Martin.

The press corps did take dictation from Crump, a point which can be seen in our reports, including today’s and tomorrow’s. But as this series proceeded, we realized the bad judgment of the New York Times in the early reporting was a much more compelling story.

That first news report by the Times was astounding. Unless you follow the Times public editor, in which case the famous newspaper did its typical outstanding work!

The early reporting was truly egregious. We’re changing our headline to THE STORY BEGINS. We haven’t changed the reports.

As this local story went national, the reporting was stunningly bad. The press has always behaved this way, of course, although such misconduct had traditionally been aimed at despised folk who were black.

THE STORY BEGINS: And the errors appear!

THURSDAY, JULY 25, 2013

Part 4—At the Times, just one correction: As the story began to go national, the Associated Press displayed a bit of good journalistic judgment.

On March 16, 2012, Trayvon Martin’s family was allowed to hear the recordings of the 911 calls to Sanford police on the night their son was killed. Later, the Sanford police released the recordings to the public.

When this happened, the New York Times displayed some astounding bad judgment. Lawyers for the Martin family were saying, incorrectly, that two shots could be heard on the tapes. Based upon that erroneous claim, the lawyers were telling a lurid tale of what had happened that evening—a false story they had invented.

This lurid story was untrue. But the New York Times, in a startling bit of throwback behavior, rushed the false tale into print.

This is the start of the great newspaper’s first report about the killing. The highlighted claims are false:

ALVAREZ (3/17/12): Nearly three weeks after an unarmed teenager was killed in a small city north of Orlando, stirring an outcry, a few indisputable facts remain: the teenager, who was black, was carrying nothing but a bag of Skittles, some money and a can of iced tea when he was shot. The neighborhood crime watch volunteer who got out of his car and shot him is white and Hispanic. He has not been arrested and is claiming self-defense.

Beyond that, however, little is clear about the Feb. 26 shooting death of Trayvon Martin, 17.

As criticism of the police investigation mounts, so too do the calls for swift action in a case with heavy racial overtones. Protests grow larger each week, and lawyers for the family are now asking the Department of Justice to intervene. The case also brings into sharp focus Florida's self-defense laws, which give people who feel threatened greater latitude in defending themselves than most states.

The police in of Sanford, where the shooting took place, are not revealing details of the investigation. Late Friday night, after weeks of pressure, the police played the 911 calls in the case for the family and gave copies to the news media. On the recordings, one shot, an apparent warning or miss, is heard, followed by a voice begging or pleading, and a cry. A second shot is then heard, and the pleading stops.

''It is so clear that this was a 17-year-old boy pleading for his life, and someone shot him in cold blood,'' said Natalie Jackson, one of the Martin family lawyers.

“Little is clear about the shooting,” Lizette Alvarez wrote.

But so what? By her fifth paragraph, she was letting attorney Natalie Jackson tell a lurid, inaccurate tale, with Jackson stressing how “clear” it was that that her lurid story was accurate.

Jackson’s story wasn’t accurate. Only one shot had been fired that night. This debunked the rest of that lurid story, which Jackson said was “so clear.”

Alvarez printed Jackson's tale—and in this heinous act, the New York Times engaged in come very familiar conduct. All through American history, this kind of pseudo-reporting has occurred, with lurid inventions of fact aimed at black suspects and defendants.

In this case, the old pattern persisted with a new target. The Times had engaged in the same old behavior, but now it was presenting fake facts to say that a lurid crime had been committed against a black victim.

The New York Times showed astounding bad judgment this day. To a somewhat lesser extent, so did the Orlando Sentinel, which highlighted Jackson’s lurid false tale, then aggressively corrected it three days later.

The Associated Press showed vastly better judgment. Late on March 16, the AP moved two full news reports about the 911 recordings.

Neither report made the false assertion that two shots could be heard on the tapes. Beyond that, the AP didn’t publish the lurid, erroneous claims being promulgated by Jackson and Benjamin Crump, the Martin attorneys.

The AP showed very good judgment. Indeed, in its second, slightly longer report, the AP seemed to challenge the spreading claim that two shots could be heard on the tapes.

Here’s how Mike Schneider’s second report began, headline included:

SCHNEIDER (3/16/12): Family of slain black Fla. teen hear 911 calls

After listening to recordings of 911 calls Friday night, the family of a black teenager fatally shot by a white neighborhood watch volunteer say they're more convinced than ever that the shooter should be charged.

Attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing the family, told reporters outside Sanford City Hall that 17-year-old Trayvon Martin's parents both broke down and cried as they listened to the recordings.

"They are completely devastated, and they are in unbelievable grief," Crump said.

Police agreed to release the recordings earlier that afternoon. Martin's parents previously sued to have the recordings released. A hearing for the case was scheduled for Monday.

Martin was fatally shot last month as he returned to a Sanford home during a visit from Miami.

Officials released a total of seven 911 calls. All of the callers described a single shot.

This second report is heavily tilted toward the idea that “an injustice had been done with no one arrested;” toward the idea that the Sanford police were misbehaving in various ways; toward the idea that “there's a large possibility that [the killing] is a racist act.”

In that sense, this second report by Schneider tilted heavily toward the claims being made by Jackson and Crump. In our view, Schneider’s first report was much more disciplined and judicious.

That said, Schneider showed extremely good judgment in two major ways. He never reported the inaccurate claim that two shots can be heard on the tape. And he didn’t report the heinous, false claims which were being promulgated by Jackson and Crump.

Indeed, in this second news report, the AP seemed to be subtly rebutting the claim that two shots could be heard on the tape. “All of the callers described a single shot,” Schneider explicitly reported, early in his report.

Schneider was right about that. But so what? Despite that fact, the New York Times was inaccurately telling its readers that two shots could be head on the tape.

This false report, and the lurid story it fueled, produced a wave of anger across the country, the Orlando Sentinel later reported.

Can we talk? This is precisely the way the American press had traditionally fueled our lynch mobs. On this occasion, it was attorneys Jackson and Crump who were spreading lurid false tales, provoking waves of anger among those who had been misinformed.

The New York Times raced to repeat their lurid false claims, provoking anger around the country. Showing vastly better judgment, the Associated Press refused.

The start of that New York Times report should go straight to the Smithsonian. That said, the Times report was adorned with other factual misstatements, one of which defines the way this story is being told even today.

Alvarez seemed to be taking her frameworks, and her factual claims, straight from the Martin lawyers. In her opening paragraph, she strongly pushed the idea that race lay at the heart of the case. She introduced the (irrelevant) fact that Martin had purchased some Skittles that night.

She stressed the claim by ear-witness Mary Cutcher that “she heard Trayvon pleading” that night, and that the police conducted a “cursory” investigation. (Cutcher’s claims turned out to be so compromised that the prosecution didn’t put her on the stand during the trial.)

Those were issues of framework and emphasis. But by paragraph 4, Alvarez was stating her first inaccurate “fact.” At least three more basic factual misstatements would follow.

Second misstatement: According to Alvarez, this is what happened when Zimmerman called police that night: “The dispatcher told him to stay in his car and said the police would be on the way. But Mr. Zimmerman got out.”

That claim was being advanced by the Martin lawyers—and the claim was false. But alas! This false claim still plays a central part in the way this story is told.

Third misstatement: At one point, Alvarez quoted Tracy Martin, Trayvon Martin’s father. Understandably, Martin was angry and distraught about his son’s death. But Alvarez quoted him making another false statement:

“Everybody is outraged...For him to be murdered by someone who weighs more than 100 pounds [more] than him, more than 10 years older than him, this is an outrage.”

On cable, the claim that Zimmerman outweighed Martin by 100 pounds became a standard part of the story. (In some press reports, the alleged weight difference crept up to 110 pounds.)

The claim was a vast exaggeration. Though Martin was taller, Zimmerman did outweigh Martin that night—though at most, by 46 pounds.

Fourth misstatement: Alvarez made another misstatement this day—and the New York Times even corrected it, three weeks later, in strangely belated fashion. This formal correction was appended to Alvarez’s report, as you can see on-line:

NEW YORK TIMES (4/6/12): This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 6, 2012

An article on March 17 about appeals for a Department of Justice investigation into the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman misstated the time period in which Mr. Zimmerman made 46 calls to 911. The calls were made over the course of about eight years, not over 14 months. The error was repeated in a front-page article on March 21 about Florida’s self-defense law known as Stand Your Ground.

In her initial report, Alvarez reported that Zimmerman had made 46 calls to the Sanford police over the previous 14 months. This inaccurate fact was routinely used to paint Zimmerman as a crime-obsessed nut.

In fact, the 46 calls had been made over a span dating to August 2004. In the previous 14 months, Zimmerman had made twelve calls to the Sanford police. (That includes the two calls he made on the night of the killing.)

This first news report in the New York Times contained at least four factual errors, one of which is still repeated everywhere bullshit is sold. It also stressed several irrelevant facts, and it stressed the racial framework being advanced by Crump and Jackson.

Can we talk? Alvarez seems to have taken dictation from the lawyers this day. Her most appalling bit of misjudgment involved the promulgation of the false claim that two shots were fired that night, accompanied by the lurid false tale which stirred anger around the country.

The American press has always behaved this way toward despised targets. In this case, the New York Times has never even bothered to issue a formal correction of the false statement that two shots can be heard on the tapes. On-line, that false statement stands uncorrected to this very day in in this news report.

Perhaps more significantly, the Times never alerted its readers to a significant fact: Attorneys Jackson and Crump had promulgated a heinous false story about what occurred that night.

As the year proceeded, Jackson and Crump would make other false claims, as we’ll note tomorrow. Times readers weren’t told or warned about these unreliable sources. Jackson and Crump were allowed to proceed, as has been the common practice with people who stir great anger against approved social targets.

Magisterially, the New York Times agreed to correct one false fact.

The Times corrected one false fact, its statement about the 46 phone calls. Therein lies a remarkable story, a story which extends right up to the related false claim advanced last week by Professor Cobb on our highly lauded and magisterial PBS NewsHour.

The professor’s false claim was made last week. If you get your bullshit from MSNBC, you head variants of the false claim on a wide range of your favorite “news” programs.

As we’ve told you, fake facts never die. Tomorrow, the long, winding road to the NewsHour.

Tomorrow: The 46 calls! A fake fact gets reworked.

Lawrence O’Donnell just can’t quit Bill Clinton!

WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 2013

Still dazzled by Gennifer Flowers: It’s one of the most remarkable press stories of the past twenty years.

We refer to the way the East Coast Irish Catholic Democratic-leaning press cabal led the charge against President Clinton, then against Candidate Gore.

Who were the top ten Clinton/Gore-haters? It’s hard to know who would make that list who isn’t East Coast Irish Catholic.

Lawrence O’Donnell was one of those people. He spread false claims about Candidate Gore all the way through October 2000. But as of today, it’s his jones against President Clinton that really won’t let his soul go.

Lawrence just can’t quit Bill Clinton. Last night, our biggest obsessive on this topic decided he ought to say this:

O’DONNELL (7/23/13): Ari Melber, I want to read to you some of the New York Times editorial which has just come out telling Anthony Weiner to get out of this thing.

It says, “At some point the full story of Anthony Weiner and his sexting relationship habits and sexual relationships will be told. In the meantime, the serially evasive Mr. Weiner should take his marital troubles and personal compulsions out of the public eye away from cameras, off the Web, and out of the race for mayor of New York City.”

It says, "Mr. Weiner says he’s staying in the race. To those who know his arrogance and have grown tired of the tawdry saga he has dragged the city into, this is not surprising."

I don’t think the Times said that about Bill Clinton when his problems erupted in New Hampshire. Bill Clinton, by the way, who suffered a New York City press conference by Gennifer Flowers in which she played audiotapes that absolutely proved their real sexual relations they had for years.

A sexual jones simply won’t let this tortured son of Olde Ireland go. That said, the highlighted claim is simply absurd, although we’re sure this genuine crackpot believes the things he has said.

No, Virginia! Gennifer Flowers’ (doctored) tapes didn’t prove that she and Wild Bill had sexual relations for years, or that they had sexual relations at all. Flowers turned out to be one of the least reliable, more repulsive figures in modern political history, as would be clear to anyone who ever reviewed her work.

Who else spent so much time explaining that Hillary Clinton was the world’s most gigantic lesbo. Who else spent more time listing the Clintons’ murders?

That said, the various Jones boys in the press could never abandon their love for Flowers. By August 1999, Chris Matthews, the number one Clinton/Gore-hater, seemed especially smitten.

“You're a very beautiful woman,” the long-term nutcase said at one point during Flowers’ half-hour embarrassment on his Hardball program. “And I have to tell you,” Matthews continued. “He knows that, you know that, and everybody watching knows that. Hillary Clinton knows that!”

“Gosh, you’re making me blush here,” Flowers modestly replied, putting her murder charges against the Clintons ever so briefly on hold. But Matthews came right back at his yellow-haired guest:

“It's an objective statement, Gennifer,” he defiantly said. “I'm not flirting. So let's go on.” He seemed especially preoccupied with the front of his pants at this time.

The lunacy of the East Coast Irish Catholic gang is one of the major journalistic stories of the past twenty years. Regarding Clinton, O’Donnell’s jones still won’t let his soul go.

His comment last night was simply insane. In real time, he was so upset with Clinton’s blow jobs that he worked and worked against Candidate Gore, then decided to work some more.

In the end, he and Matthews sent Bush to the White House. Today, we liberals all know that we must applaud their obvious brilliance.

What the New York Times said at that time: Weiner’s story is different from Clinton’s, unless your various sex obsessions come to you straight from the priests.

That said, here’s part of what the New York Times said in real time about What Flowers Was Saying:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (1/28/92): For lack of satisfactory evidence, most journalists declined to publish stories about Mr. Clinton's personal life. Then Gennifer Flowers, a former state employee, paid by a supermarket tabloid, contended she had a longstanding affair with the Governor. She rehearsed the accusations yesterday on television.

In his response Sunday, Governor Clinton "acknowledged wrongdoing. I have acknowledged causing pain in my marriage." He won't provide detail and he need not, unless it develops that his private conduct arguably touches his public performance or fitness for office.

"Anybody who's listening gets the drift of it," he said, "and let's get on and get back to the real problems of this country." To which Hillary Clinton added sensibly, "If that's not enough for people, then heck, don't vote for him."

Mr. Clinton describes Gennifer Flowers as no more than a friendly acquaintance. Because the tape recordings she so far proffers don't appear to refute that characterization, there seems to be little basis for demanding further comment from the Clintons.

The Times was correct. O’Donnell’s desperate needs notwithstanding, the Flowers tapes proved nothing at all. And her story in that supermarket tabloid had been full of embarrassing factual errors.

O’Donnell has a desperate jones, a jones which won’t let his empty soul go. Back in the day, he transferred his loathing from Clinton to Gore, refused to give up, kept working hard and sent George Bush to the White House.

Bill Clinton had enjoyed ten jobs! Thanks to Matthews and O’Donnell, the dead of Iraq had to pay.

Who were the biggest Clinton/Gore haters: It’s hard to know who makes the list except for We Irish. Some names:

Matthews, Dowd, O’Donnell, Connolly, Seelye, Russert, Williams, Carlson.

Adding Hannity gets us to nine. Who else makes that list?

(Warning: O’Reilly was quite fair to Gore. Did someone suggest Peggy Noonan?)

Do parents impose psychodramas on kids?

WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 2013

Maureen Dowd’s overwrought mother: Do parents sometimes attempt to impose their own psychodramas on their children?

Can they sometimes display bad judgment in the process?

Well actually yes, that sometimes occurs! Remember Maureen Dowd’s column from May 1998?

Dowd was in Belfast, observing the attempted resolution of the troubles. As she started, she recalled a psychodrama her mother once dropped on her head:

DOWD (5/20/98): Here is what you need to know about the Irish soul.

We are an unforgiving people. We believe in the Evil Eye. We like to fight. We don't like to compromise. We lie in wait for the worst. We lurk about in the past.

When I first moved to New York, I called my mother to tell her I was going to stay in a residential hotel called the Oliver Cromwell. There was a long pause, then tearful anger. "He encouraged his soldiers to throw babies up in the air and impale them on their swords as they came down," she snapped. I found another hotel. In Irish time, 1651 and 1981 were only moments apart.

Poor Dowd! She had to move to a different hotel, all thanks to Cromwell's bad conduct.

We Irish “lurk about in the past.” So do many other adults. Sometimes, they can impose a brutal past on their children in the process.

For extra credit: Does overwrought parenting yield top results? Do you ever read Dowd’s troubled columns?

Word of warning: Your lizard brain is going to tell you that only “white” parents can do this.

We’ll suggest that your lizard is wrong.

Are children being scared to death because of Trayvon Martin?

WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 2013

Anderson Cooper, Part Deux, and a devoted mother: Are children being scared to death because of the death of Trayvon Martin?

Last night, Anderson Cooper aired Part 2 of his attempt to discuss “Race and Justice in America.” Overall, we’d call his efforts weak. In a later post, we’ll discuss comments made last night by Sunny Hostin and Mark Geragos, who conducted a vaudeville act with Cooper each night during the Zimmerman trial.

We think topics like these deserve better. They won’t likely get it from Cooper.

Last night, Cooper spoke with a mother who is concerned for her 14-year-old son. Christy Oglesby works for CNN in Atlanta. It’s perfectly obvious that she is a good, decent, smart, caring person.

Oglesby is concerned for her son. At one point, she described her son’s reaction to the Zimmerman verdict:

OGLESBY (7/23/13): I've certainly done my best sacrificially to give him the education he needs, to give him the world exposure that he needs. And it is heartbreaking. And what you said—

On Saturday night, I made sure that I was at home when the verdict came in. I had been at work, and I made sure I was at home. And what he said to me, is "So for the rest of my life, mom, I'm a suspect?" And how does that make a mother feel?

And it's something that—you know, and what I have to explain to him is that, "Drew, it is not your burden. This is someone's perception of you. And what someone thinks of you is not what you have to think of yourself."

[…]

So it is a rough road, because I didn't want to fall out in tears when he says, "So for the rest of my life, I'm a suspect?" So I waited until he went to bed before I wept.

For the rest of his life, is this young man a suspect? We wondered why the verdict made him ask that question. More specifically, what has this young man been told about the events of that night in Sanford? What has his decent, devoted, caring mother been told about those events?

Many people have gone on TV and misled that young man. Cooper, a child of great wealth and best-dressed-list vacuity, has permitted various people to do this night after night.

Why did George Zimmerman describe Martin that night as “a real suspicious guy?” Was Martin actually doing something odd or inappropriate? Was he doing something that would have made him seem “suspicious” to a reasonable person?

Because we weren’t present that night, we can’t tell you. But how often have you seen any discussion of what Zimmerman said that Martin was doing, first during that 911 call and then to police investigators?

On cable, Zimmerman’s claims have been declared beyond the pale. Beyond that, there have been very few discussions about the claim that Martin attacked Zimmerman as he walked back to his truck.

Is that claim true? Again, we don’t know. But some of the evidence from the trial was directly relevant to this claim. But did you ever see a discussion of that evidence? For example, did you ever see a discussion of where the altercation occurred?

Cable has been dominated by Soviet-style story-telling. All suggestions that Martin may have done something tragically wrong have been declared beyond the pale. As a result, children all over the country have been handed a tremendously frightening story:

An innocent child who had done nothing wrong was shot dead, shot through the heart.

They’ve been told that this child was shot through the heart because he was back. That is the only story millions of kids have been told.

Parents have heard that story too. They too may not realize how much is being withheld.

Did Trayvon Martin do something suspicious? We don’t know, but obviously, it’s possible.

Did Trayvon Martin attack George Zimmerman? Same answer. But on cable, very bad people have issued a witch brew composed of two kinds of facts. Many of their facts have been false.

Others have been withheld.

Very bad people have crawled over cable to discuss the Zimmerman trial. It takes a special kind of cretin to want to scare millions of children (and parents) so much—to scare them by refusing to give them the full range of the known facts.

THE STORY BEGINS: New York Times readers were grossly misled!

WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 2013

Part 3—The Times didn’t care: Can Natalie Jackson say that?

In the New York Times, she could! On March 17, 2012, the Times published its first report about the killing of Trayvon Martin.

Quickly, Lizette Alvarez made a very serious factual error. As she did, she painted an astonishingly lurid picture of what had occurred that night:

ALVAREZ (3/17/12): Nearly three weeks after an unarmed teenager was killed in a small city north of Orlando, stirring an outcry, a few indisputable facts remain: the teenager, who was black, was carrying nothing but a bag of Skittles, some money and a can of iced tea when he was shot. The neighborhood crime watch volunteer who got out of his car and shot him is white and Hispanic. He has not been arrested and is claiming self-defense.

Beyond that, however, little is clear about the Feb. 26 shooting death of Trayvon Martin, 17.

As criticism of the police investigation mounts, so too do the calls for swift action in a case with heavy racial overtones. Protests grow larger each week, and lawyers for the family are now asking the Department of Justice to intervene. The case also brings into sharp focus Florida's self-defense laws, which give people who feel threatened greater latitude in defending themselves than most states.

The police in of Sanford, where the shooting took place, are not revealing details of the investigation. Late Friday night, after weeks of pressure, the police played the 911 calls in the case for the family and gave copies to the news media. On the recordings, one shot, an apparent warning or miss, is heard, followed by a voice begging or pleading, and a cry. A second shot is then heard, and the pleading stops.

''It is so clear that this was a 17-year-old boy pleading for his life, and someone shot him in cold blood,'' said Natalie Jackson, one of the Martin family lawyers.

Can Natalie Jackson say that? In fairness, it isn’t Jackson who makes the obvious factual error in the highlighted text. Alvarez stated, in her own voice, that two shots can be heard “on the recordings.”

Alas! Only one shot was fired that night; absolutely no one disputes that fact at this point. The inaccurate factual statement was made in Alvarez’s voice. But Jackson was then quoted making a neinously lurid claim, a lurid claim which completed an unmistakable picture:

George Zimmerman fired a first shot which missed. As Trayvon Martin pleaded for his life, Zimmerman fired a second shot, killing the boy in cold blood.

Had Alvarez actually heard the 911 tapes at the time this report was written? As of yesterday, we still assumed that she had not. As of today, we aren’t sure. Here is a bit of background:

In the early edition of the March 17 Orlando Sentinel, Rene Stutzman presented the same lurid tale. But as she did, there was no suggestion that Stutzman had heard the tapes yet herself, and the lurid tale was attributed wholly to Jackson:

STUTZMAN (3/17/12): The family of Trayvon Martin spent hours Friday night with police, listening to the eight 911 calls made the night the 17-year-old was shot and killed by a neighborhood crime-watch volunteer in Sanford.

"What you hear on that tape is shocking. It's riveting," Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Trayvon's family, said after the group emerged from the meeting with police late Friday.

Police had previously refused to release the calls. The shooter, 28-year-old George Zimmerman, has not been arrested and is not charged with a crime. He claimed the Feb. 26 shooting was in self-defense.

Natalie Jackson, another attorney, said Zimmerman fired a warning shot, then a kill shot.

“You hear a shot, a clear shot, then you hear a 17-year-old boy begging for his life,” Jackson said. “Then you hear a second shot.”

It was the first time that anyone said two shots were fired that night.

“It was the first time that anyone said two shots were fired that night.” As we now know, no one had ever described two shots because only one shot was fired.

Alas! You’re looking at horrific examples of runaway tabloid journalism. Only one shot had been fired that night. But Jackson now said that “you hear” two shots, and she drew a lurid portrait of what had happened between the two shots, one of which never had happened.

Should Stutzman have published that lurid tale, in which George Zimmerman shoots a boy with “a kill shot” as the boy is “begging for his life?” We’ll have to say she shouldn’t have done that, unless the claim was adorned with a great many warnings about its highly speculative and uncorroborated nature.

In fact, Jackson’s speculations were heinously false; they introduced evil into the world. Three days later, the Orlando Sentinel corrected the record, to the extent that such a thing can be accomplished.

Including the headline, this is the way that report began. At one point, Stutzman discussed the effects of Jackson’s false tale, which she called an “interpretation:”

STUTZMAN (3/20/12): Trayvon Martin shooting: Gun that killed teen fired once

The handgun that killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black 17-year-old, was fired once—not twice—by a neighborhood crime-watch volunteer, according to information obtained by the Orlando Sentinel.

Police found a single shell casing at the scene, and when they seized George Zimmerman's handgun, a Kel Tec 9 mm, its magazine was full, according to a source close to the investigation. The only bullet missing was the one in the chamber, the source said.

That contrasts with the graphic interpretation that lawyers for the victim's family made Friday night after listening to 911 calls from neighbors who heard or saw a fight between Zimmerman and Trayvon.

Lawyers Natalie Jackson and Benjamin Crump insisted then that they could hear two shots on one 911 call, a warning shot and a kill shot, and that that proved Zimmerman was a murderer.

"You hear a shot, a clear shot, then you hear a 17-year-old boy begging for his life then you hear a second shot," Jackson said.

Those statements fueled a great deal of anger and frustration among those following the case in cyberspace. Twitter, Facebook and other social media exploded with news that two shots were fired.

Jackson and Crump were not available for comment Monday evening, but a statement released by their spokesman said, "Regardless of how many times George Zimmerman pulled the trigger that night, unfortunately for Trayvon Martin, it only took a single bullet to end his life."

Their Friday night statements about the two loud bangs on the recording run counter to other evidence. Three witnesses who have made public statements described a single shot. Sanford police would not discuss gun evidence.

For the record, Stutzman noted that a second lawyer, Benjamin Crump, had “insisted” that there were two shots.

In fairness, Stutzman still didn’t know at this point that only one shot had been fired. She was reporting information from an unnamed source.

This information turned out to be accurate, unlike the lurid claims advanced by attorneys Jackson and Crump. On the record, Sanford police were still declining to “discuss gun evidence.”

On the record, the police were still playing by the rules. Can the same be said for Jackson and Crump? For Stutzman and Alvarez? For their deeply irresponsible editors?

Let’s discuss the evil that enters the world when people invent lurid “interpretations,” when journalists agree to loose these invented tales on the public.

Stutzman described some of the harm that was done when the New York Times and the Orlando Sentinel published this evil, false speculation. “Those statements fueled a great deal of anger and frustration among those following the case in cyberspace,” she reported. “Twitter, Facebook and other social media exploded with news that two shots were fired.”

Even there, Stutzman (or her editor) still couldn’t bring herself to speak in clear direct language. Instead of using a term like “false speculation,” she described the public’s reaction to “news” that two shots had been fired.

In that passage, Jackson’s false story was still described as “news!”

The public’s reaction to that false story was perfectly understandable. If Stutzman can be trusted on this point, Jackson’s lurid statements produced “a great deal of anger” out in the world. “Twitter, Facebook and other social media exploded with news that two shots were fired.”

This was deeply unfortunate—we’ll call it evil—in two major ways.

On the one hand, Natalie Jackson’s lurid false tale was deeply unfair to George Zimmerman. She spread a false story which was so lurid that it can only be thought of as evil.

This has been done, since time immemorial, to other types of suspects in the south, and of course all over the world. Whether our lizards like it or not, Jackson behaved like the head of an old-fashioned southern lynch mob in this disgraceful performance.

(When she was asked why she had done this, Jackson was “not available for comment.” Somewhat similarly, the Orlando Sentinel never explained why they had given those lurid claims such an extremely high profile.)

Jackson’s disgraceful conduct was deeply unfair to George Zimmerman, who is an actual person, not an actor in Jackson’s internal dramas. But it was also unfair to all those people out in the world who exploded in anger.

According to Stutzman, many people exploded in anger when they were exposed to Jackson’s lurid false tale. Those people had been played about the facts of this case, a process which continues on cable right to this very day.

Just last week, decent people were still getting played about basic facts all over the cable dial. They heard a wide range of cable players making a string of false statements.

They heard the august Professor Cobb make at least two different false statements on the PBS Newshour. If they were watching MSNBC, they saw Maya Wiley make a certain false statement on several different programs.

Is this a democracy? Are our government and our society really “of the people?” If so, it’s an evil thing when elites go on TV, night after night, and keep misinforming the people about deeply serious matters.

The people who exploded in anger didn’t know they were being misinformed when they read that lurid false tale. They exploded in anger because they cared—and because they had been misinformed by a reprehensible lawyer and some horrible journalists.

To the credit of the Orlando Sentinel, the paper tried to walk back its earlier mistakes in that March 20 report. Right in its headline, the paper reported that only one shot had been fired that night. The paper signaled concern about the conduct of Jackson and Crump in pushing that lurid false tale.

The New York Times didn’t do that! Showing its typical horrible judgment, the deeply horrible upper-class paper had taken Jackson’s lurid false tale and pimped it extremely hard. The lurid false tale formed the basic framework for the paper’s first report about the killing of Martin.

That lurid tale was heinously false. But so what? To this day, no correction has been appended to that appalling news report, announcing that only one shot was fired.

In fairness, Alvarez committed a shitload of factual errors in that first news report. One of them has been formally corrected, although this horrible newspaper waited more than two weeks before it did even that.

(A more lurid version of that false claim was still being peddled by Cobb and Wiley and several others in recent weeks. We will detail that conduct tomorrow. That conduct was very bad.)

Alvarez included a boatload of errors in that first report. It would have been awkward for the Times to correct its full range of mistakes.

Apparent result? The mighty newspaper corrected one of its boatload of errors. The assertion that two shots were fired stands uncorrected to this very day. Beyond that, no attempt was ever made to address the lurid false story Alvarez peddled—a lurid false story which may have caused many Times readers to explode in anger.

The Sentinel attempted to address the harm it had done. Tomorrow, we’ll show you how the New York Times handled its boatload of errors.

Many people exploded in anger when that read that gruesome report. Those people had been vastly misled.

The New York Times didn’t seem to care. But then, this appalling newspaper has behaved this way for quite a few decades.

We’d say the pattern is obvious here:

Average people get treated like fools. Upper-class players don’t care.

Tomorrow: As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, false claims without end. Amen.

What better judgment looked like: The Associated Press showed much better judgment concerning Jackson's lurid false claims.

What did better judgment look like? Details tomorrow.

We keep returning to this editorial!

TUESDAY, JULY 23, 2013

It still doesn’t seem to make sense: Thanks to Kevin Drum’s work on the topic, we often wonder if the nation’s improved test scores are in part a reflection of lead abatement.

Lead has been removed from the air. Lead paint has been removed from walls. This improvement in the environment would tend to make children smarter.

On the other hand: When we read the New York Times, we sometimes wonder if some unknown environmental factor is making our ruling elites much dumber. By now, we’ve returned, several times, to this July 15 editorial, “Trayvon Martin’s Legacy.”

It still doesn't seem to make sense.

We’re mainly puzzled by its claims about self-defense laws. But the editorial started like this:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (7/15/13): It may not be possible to consider the case of George Zimmerman, who was acquitted Saturday of all charges in the killing of Trayvon Martin, as anything but a sad commentary on the state of race relations and the battle over gun rights in America today.

Certainly it is about race— ask any black man, up to and including President Obama, and he will tell you at least a few stories that sound eerily like what happened that rainy winter night in Sanford, Fla.

We find that odd in several ways. Can any black man, including Obama, tell us “at least a few stories that sound eerily like what happened that rainy winter night in Sanford?”

We’re not sure what that means. A young person was shot and killed on that rainy night, in circumstances that are hard to define. Could Obama really could tell several stories that are eerily like that?

Presumably, these stories wouldn’t have happened to him, since he is still alive. Or did the editors mean something else? For people who act like they care about race so much, they seem to jot off their editorials in ten seconds flat.

Who writes these editorials? We’ve kept returning to this piece because we’ve found this passage so puzzling:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL: The jury reached its verdict after having been asked to consider Mr. Zimmerman’s actions in light of the now-notorious Stand Your Ground provision in Florida’s self-defense law. Under that law, versions of which are on the books in two dozen states, a person may use deadly force if he or she “reasonably believes” it is necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm—a low bar that the prosecutors in this case fought in vain to overcome.

These laws sound intuitive: who would argue that you may not protect yourself against great harm? But of course, the concept of “reasonable belief” is transformed into something deadly dangerous when firearms are involved. And when the Stand Your Ground laws intersect with lax concealed-carry laws, it works essentially to self-deputize anyone with a Kel-Tec 9 millimeter and a grudge.

We were puzzled by that on the day it appeared. We still can’t figure it out.

Was the jury “asked to consider Zimmerman’s actions in light of the now-notorious Stand Your Ground provision in Florida’s self-defense law?” Sort of! Unless we’re missing something, there was one perfunctory paragraph in the (lengthy) jury instructions explaining that Zimmerman had no duty to retreat from an attack.

On the other hand, the defense never really discussed Zimmerman’s right to “stand his ground” since it claimed he was flat on his back, with Martin atop him, when he used deadly force.

We’re puzzled by that part of the editorial. We are completely confused by the highlighted passage.

It’s true—variants of the so-called Stand Your Ground provision are routinely said to be on the books in roughly two dozen states. But having made that observation, the editors go on to describe a provision which sounds to us like simple self-defense. Is there some state in the union where a citizen can’t “use deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm?” That sounds to us like a standard precept, not like “a low bar” unique to states like Florida.

The editors says this precept “sounds intuitive.” We think that's true, and that's the problem with the editorial's reasoning. In our view, Stand Your Ground laws do not.

Do the editors know whereof they spoke? The leading authority on self-defense (United States) offers this brief overview:

WIKIPEDIA: In the United States, the defense of self-defense allows a person to use reasonable force in his or her own defense or the defense of others...

While the definitions vary from state to state, the general rule makes an important distinction between the use of non-deadly and deadly force. A person may use non-deadly force to prevent imminent injury; however, a person may not use deadly force unless that person is in reasonable fear of serious injury or death. Some states also include a duty to retreat, when deadly force may only be used if the person is unable to safely retreat.

According to that, it’s generally true that a person can use deadly force if he is in reasonable fear of serious injury or death.

Is there something we’re missing here? We keep going back to this editorial; it just keeps seeming to make no sense. More generally, we’re often puzzled by the flyweight work, and the ethical blindness, found in the New York Times.

Lead abatement may have made children smarter, but what the heck has become of our adults?

Second question: Can a nation whose “intellectual elites” are thus afflicted really expect to survive? We're just asking, since nobody else seems to see anything wrong!

What are children being told?

TUESDAY, JULY 23, 2013

About the Zimmerman verdict: What are children being told about the killing of Trayvon Martin? About the Zimmerman verdict?

On the morning after the verdict, Benjamin Jealous raised this question. He spoke with Candy Crowley as part of an error-riddled State of the Union program.

All the hacks stated their favorite fake facts. Jealous was deeply concerned:

JEALOUS (7/14/13): We should listen for our young people and search with them when they ask how is it that young Trayvon Martin could be killed by George Zimmerman and George Zimmerman gets no time when Michael Vick got two and a half years for killing dogs? When a domestic violence victim in Northern Florida shot warning shots in the air over the head of her attacker and got 20 years.

CROWLEY: Right.

JEALOUS: And it's important that we take the feelings of our young people very seriously, and we help them sort through this.

We’ll be honest. We feel sorry for children who are getting their help from Jealous. We feel sorry for children whose loving parents are getting misled by such folk.

For an idea of what we mean, consider this heartfelt op-ed column from Sunday’s Baltimore Sun. The piece was written by the frightened, loving parents of a 12-year-old Baltimore boy.

We’re sure these parents are extremely good people. We’re sure they meant every word they wrote. But children are constantly forced to deal with the outlooks, psychodramas and misconceptions of their parents. We’re not sure we don’t feel sorry for kids who are told things like this:

After Trayvon, having 'the talk' with our son

An open letter to our 12-year-old son:

When you were a little boy, whenever you started crying, we would put you in your car seat and take you for a drive through downtown Baltimore. We would play Sweet Honey in the Rock and sing out loud until you started moving your head, clapping your hands, and singing along. You grew up on folk music and freedom songs, and though you did not understand them, we had always hoped that the meaning of the words would someday make sense. We vowed, as all parents do, to protect you and to do all that we could to make the world a better and safer place, where you could grow up and be free.

We have done all that we can for you and your brother, and yet, in so many of the ways that are important, we have failed you. The world is not a better place. It is not safer, and people are not equal. We are still being judged (and judging others) by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. We have not gotten to the Promised Land and are really starting to question whether that land actually exists.

We are the parents of two African-American boys, and every day that we leave the house, we know that we could become Trayvon Martin's parents.

It’s true, of course, that these parents could be visited by all sorts of tragedies “every day that we leave the house.” That said, isn’t it time that we stop telling children that they are likely to be gunned down, shot through the heart by a vigilante, just for buying some candy?

Children much younger than 12 are being scared shitless as they hear the embellished stories pimped each night by demagogues on TV. (Most of the demagogues are white.) Loving parents hear those stories and they don’t understand how many of the “facts” they’re hearing are untrue, bogus, false—fake.

We hate to provide the buzzkill here, but the tragic killing of Trayvon Martin was an unusual event. In large part, that explains why we’ve spent so much time discussing it.

Vigilantes are not gunning down children every time they go out for Skittles. Are we sure we want to terrify this many good children this way?

In every generation, parents impose their fears and their worldviews on their children. Twelve years later, should these loving parents really feel they have “failed” their son because people “are still not equal?” We’re sorry, but statements like that seem aimed at parents’ emotional needs more than at those of their children.

Inevitably, we end up here. To our ear, this sounds unfortunate:

For 12 years, you have been protected. You have no idea of what it means to struggle. You have never been made to feel invisible and have never felt profiled or threatened. We have protected you when we probably should have prepared you. Now that the jury has spoken and the dust has settled, we will turn our attention to speaking to you and your brother every day about what you need to know and what you need to do to navigate your way through this city and through this country. We still believe that the world will be a better place, but, son, you will have to create it—and where we failed, you will succeed. We look forward to being there on that day and to celebrating with you.

Really? Those kids are going to hear “the talk” every day? Because of what the Zimmerman jury said?

These devoted parents make it clear that they know about the full range of dangers confronting kids who live in our cities. “Your mother cried when the George Zimmerman verdict was announced,” they write, “but those tears are nothing compared to the ones that she sheds over the senseless violence that happens every day across this city.”

Good for this mother, who actually cares! One sensational Baltimore teenager lost her life just last week at the hands of another teen who had lost his way.

On balance, this open letter discusses the potential danger from youths who have lost their way more than the danger from vigilantes. Statistically, that is surely the larger danger. So why is this open letter tied to the Zimmerman verdict?

These parents discuss the need for “the talk.” Sadly, that need exists. But at present, are children perhaps being terrified to serve the needs of their parents? More specifically, to serve the needs of the people who are on TV each night, conning and scaring the rest of the nation by endlessly stating their favorite fake facts?

By disappearing large piles of facts which may help explain what happened that night? By creating brain-dead comparisons between Zimmerman and Michael Vick? (For the record, we like Michael Vick.)

Increasingly, those people on TV strike us as very bad people. Because of the various needs of those very bad people, a whole lot of children, from 12 on down, are being aggressively frightened, often by bogus facts.

(A bridge collapsed in Minneapolis a few years back. We didn’t stage a national breakdown in which children were told that they’re doing to drown the next time they drive with their mother.)

We don’t think much of the various Jealous types these days. More than anything else, we are increasingly blown away by how dishonest they are. As tfromse people serve their own needs, the really good people, the really good parents, are getting more and more scared.

Why not tell those parents the truth? What makes these horrible people keep reciting their treasured fake facts? What makes them willing to disappear all the rest of those facts?

Very good people wrote that column. Very bad people have conned us each night on the TV machine.

Tomorrow: Another pile of fake facts on The One True Channel

Postscript: Your lizard brain will tell you that you need to be outraged by what we have said. Why don't you do the right thing just for once? Get a tight hold on your lizard!

THE STORY BEGINS: Alvarez hears a second shot!

TUESDAY, JULY 23, 2013

Part 2—Truly heinous conduct: Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Sanford, Florida on Sunday evening, February 26.

The Orlando Sentinel is the local big-city daily. Except for a brief crime report on February 28, the Sentinel began to cover the case on March 9.

In that initial news report, the Sentinel reported that Tracy Martin had called for George Zimmerman’s arrest at a news conference in Orlando. Later in her report, Rene Stutzman described the state of the investigation and noted some points of agreement:

STUTZMAN (3/9/12): Police are still investigating, trying to determine whether Zimmerman is guilty of manslaughter, according to department records. They have interviewed Zimmerman several times and had him re-enact what happened, said Sanford police Chief Bill Lee Jr.

Detectives should complete their investigation next week at the latest, he said, and will let the State Attorney's Office decide whether to file criminal charges.

[...]

Both sides agree that Trayvon and Zimmerman scuffled before the shooting, and there is evidence to corroborate Zimmerman's self-defense claims, the chief said.

When police arrived, an officer overheard Zimmerman say, “‘I was yelling for someone to help me but no one would help me,’” according to an incident report released Thursday. It also noted that the back of Zimmerman's shirt was wet and had grass clippings on it, as if he had been on his back on the ground.

On one recorded 911 call, the police chief said, "you can hear the struggle and the gunshot."

That was the start of the local coverage. The police chief seemed to say that you could hear one gunshot.

On March 17, the story went national in the New York Times with a news report by Lizette Alvarez. The report was larded with factual errors, only one of which was ever formally corrected.

That said, the first five paragraphs of the report were about as egregious as crime reporting can get.

What follows is truly egregious reporting. Included is an egregious factual error—an egregious error the New York Times never corrected or explained.

So-called journalism departments should preserve this text in amber. It should be studied as a leading example of what was once called yellow journalism:

ALVAREZ (3/17/12): Nearly three weeks after an unarmed teenager was killed in a small city north of Orlando, stirring an outcry, a few indisputable facts remain: the teenager, who was black, was carrying nothing but a bag of Skittles, some money and a can of iced tea when he was shot. The neighborhood crime watch volunteer who got out of his car and shot him is white and Hispanic. He has not been arrested and is claiming self-defense.

Beyond that, however, little is clear about the Feb. 26 shooting death of Trayvon Martin, 17.

As criticism of the police investigation mounts, so too do the calls for swift action in a case with heavy racial overtones. Protests grow larger each week, and lawyers for the family are now asking the Department of Justice to intervene. The case also brings into sharp focus Florida's self-defense laws, which give people who feel threatened greater latitude in defending themselves than most states.

The police in of Sanford, where the shooting took place, are not revealing details of the investigation. Late Friday night, after weeks of pressure, the police played the 911 calls in the case for the family and gave copies to the news media. On the recordings, one shot, an apparent warning or miss, is heard, followed by a voice begging or pleading, and a cry. A second shot is then heard, and the pleading stops.

''It is so clear that this was a 17-year-old boy pleading for his life, and someone shot him in cold blood,'' said Natalie Jackson, one of the Martin family lawyers.

Right in her opening paragraph, Alvarez seemed to frame the killing as a racial matter. (Not all killings are.) She opened with the (irrelevant) fact that Martin had a bag of Skittles at the time of the incident.

Rather plainly, she took her frameworks from the narrative being offered by the lawyers the Martin family had retained. That also seems to be where she got her factual howlers.

Before she was done with this news report, Alvarez would present a string of factual errors. She continued to adopt the narrative framework which came from the Martin lawyers.

But good lord! In the passages we have highlighted, Alvarez made a truly heinous factual error—an error for which the New York Times never issued a correction. She then quoted Natalie Jackson, one of the lawyers, making a truly heinous claim—a claim which stirred a great deal of anger around the country, or so the Orlando Sentinel reported three days later.

What was Alvarez’s factual error? In the passage which follows, she reports that two gunshots are heard on the 911 recording. She also starts laying the groundwork for a heinous claim:

“On the recordings, one shot, an apparent warning or miss, is heard, followed by a voice begging or pleading, and a cry. A second shot is then heard, and the pleading stops.”

In that passage, Alvarez says, in her own voice, that two shots can be heard on the tapes. She states this as a fact.

Unfortunately, that factual statement was wrong. This raises an obvious question:

Only one shot was fired that night. Within a matter of days, any dispute about this matter had ended.

Why then did Alvarez report that two shots are heard on the 911 tapes? As she made that erroneous statement, she painted a truly heinous picture of the events which transpired that night. No names were used, but the implication was obvious:

According to Alvarez, Zimmerman had fired one shot, which had missed. After Martin’s voice is heard “begging and pleading,” Zimmerman fired the second shot, “and the pleading stopped.”

Alvarez then quoted Jackson, completing a truly heinous portrait. ''It is so clear that this was a 17-year-old boy pleading for his life, and someone shot him in cold blood,” Jackson said in a deeply heinous act.

Three days later, the Sentinel reported the wave of anger which swept the country because of this lurid portrait. We return to our previous question:

In fact, there was only one gunshot that night. Why did Alvarez say, in her own voice, that two shots could be heard on the 911 recordings? Be sure to note an important fact:

According to Alvarez’s report, she herself hadn’t actually heard the 911 tapes which the police had played “for the family.” On what basis did Alvarez say that two shots are “heard” on those tapes?

Presumably, the answer comes from the Orlando Sentinel, a much more professional newspaper than the perpetually runaway Times. On that same March 17, the Sentinel also reported that police had played those tapes for the Martin family.

One difference! At the Orlando paper, two reporters and their editor produced a basically competent news report. According to the Nexis archive, this is what Rene Stutzman and Bianca Prieto wrote at the start of a front-page report (for links, see below):

STUTZMAN (3/17/12): The family of Trayvon Martin spent hours Friday night with police, listening to the eight 911 calls made the night the 17-year-old was shot and killed by a neighborhood crime-watch volunteer in Sanford.

"What you hear on that tape is shocking. It's riveting," Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Trayvon's family, said after the group emerged from the meeting with police late Friday.

Police had previously refused to release the calls. The shooter, 28-year-old George Zimmerman, has not been arrested and is not charged with a crime. He claimed the Feb. 26 shooting was in self-defense.

Natalie Jackson, another attorney, said Zimmerman fired a warning shot, then a kill shot.

"You hear a shot, a clear shot, then you hear a 17-year-old boy begging for his life," Jackson said. "Then you hear a second shot."

It was the first time that anyone said two shots were fired that night.

"The last seconds of his life were in absolute fear," Crump said of the 911 calls.

Before we’re done, we’ll question Stutzman’s judgment on one basic point. But her reporting makes Alvarez look like the yellow journalist, and apparent shill, she served as that day.

Were two gunshots heard on the tapes? Let’s compare Goofus to Gallant:

Were two gunshots heard on the tapes? Alvarez states that as a fact, in her own voice. Stutzman sources that statement directly to Jackson.

(In an insufficient warning to readers, Stutzman also notes that no one else had ever said there were two gunshots that night.)

Let’s compare combs! In the Orlando paper, a lurid claim was directly attributed, in full, to the heinous Jackson. (In that lurid claim, a warning shot is followed by a murderous “kill shot” as a “boy” begs for his life.)

In the lofty and brilliant New York Times, Alvarez simply accepted that lurid story as accurate! She repeated chunks of Jackson’s (inaccurate) tale in her own gullible voice.

As we’ve noted, the rest of Alvarez’s report was larded with factual errors. A few of those errors still form the basis for the way the events of that night are conventionally described.

But the first five paragraphs of that report are truly heinous journalism. And as time passed, things got worse at the Times.

Three days later, the pitiful little Orlando Sentinel corrected the record about those alleged gunshots, as we will show you tomorrow. They asked attorneys Jackson and Crump why they had made their false statements.

(For the only time in recorded history, the pair “were not available for comment.”)

The Sentinel corrected the record about the number of gunshots. To this day, the perpetually heinous New York Times has never made that correction.

If you read that Times report today, you still will find no correction appended concerning the number of gunshots. But then, this sort of willful misconduct is hardly new for the Times.

The whole era of “Whitewater” pseudo-scandals began with lurid, uncorrected groaners on the front page of the Times. The subsequent wars against Candidate Gore were largely invented and fueled by the Times—by Frank Rich, by Maureen Dowd, by Seelye and Bruni and a cast of supporters.

The Times has long been a heinous newspaper. Why won’t your favorite stars say so? Why is misconduct of this type perpetually deemed OK?

Tomorrow: The Sentinel corrects the record. Goofus gazes away.

The Sentinel told it two different ways: According to the Nexis archive, the Sentinel told the story two ways on March 17, 2012.

We have cited the Stutzman/Prieto report which appeared in the paper’s early editions. In that same day’s later editions, a revised report directly stated that two shots could be heard on the tapes, just as Alvarez did.

We could offer a horrible speculation as to why the Sentinel flipped on this matter, making its report less accurate in the process. Our speculation would involve the perpetual desire of regional editors to get in line with the mighty and brilliant Times.

Whatever! For a reprint of the Sentinel’s early report, click this. To review the later, erroneous version, just click here.

One basic matter of judgment: Should Stutzman have reported Jackson’s claims in the way she did in that initial report?

Ideally, she should have been more careful. She should have included many more warnings about the fact that Jackson’s (false) report about the number of gunshots couldn’t be corroborated or confirmed.

In fairness, all of Jackson’s lurid claims were directly attributed to their source. Beyond that, Stutzman even included a bit of a warning—no one had ever said a word about two gunshots before.

Still, Jackson was alleging an act of cold-blooded murder, culminating in a “kill shot” as a boy begged for his life. According to the Sentinel’s March 20 report, people all over the country became enraged after reading Jackson’s account.

Those people had been baldly misled by the latest fake fact. The Sentinel pushed back against Jackson's conduct. As always, the Times did not.

Summer sex scandals and gangster trials!

MONDAY, JULY 22, 2013

Our fatuous values watch: The fatuous values of the Times should never be overlooked.

Over the weekend, our Fatuous Values Watch continued to roll along. On Saturday, Gail Collins’ latest column bore a headline which was rather high in self-awareness:

“Sex Scandals in the Sun”

The next day, Maureen Dowd was back from France. She was back in her seat at that gangster trial in Boston:

DOWD (7/21/13): A Tender Gangster Romance

It was a subtle distinction, for a psychopath.

“I loved her,” Stevie “The Rifleman” Flemmi said of his onetime girlfriend, Debbie Davis, a sparkling blond Farrah Fawcett look-alike, “but I was not in love with her.”

That’s fortunate, since it would have made it ever so much harder to plan the 26-year-old’s 1981 murder, look into her eyes as she was strangled in your parents’ house, strip off her clothes, yank out her teeth and then dig her grave in marshland by the Neponset River.

Deterring identification was his specialty. He was the one who pulled the teeth out of corpses. He was so meticulous at his job that his partner in the Winter Hill gang, Whitey Bulger, had his girlfriend, the dental hygienist, get Flemmi a proper set of extraction tools.

Debbie Davis was a Farrah Fawcett look-alike. The Rifleman was a psychopath!

That said, we’ll take a guess that the real source of Dowd’s interest was lurking in this later paragraph:

DOWD: In return for being that most loathed thing in Irish culture, an informant, and providing information about the Mafia, Bulger got protection and tips from Connolly. That allowed him to play Jimmy Cagney, dispatching underworld enemies. He also got the signal to go on the lam.

We Irish! Is Dowd drawn to the ways of the crackpot culture in which she grew up? Or is she secretly concerned that she may be a “psychopath” too?

We’ll leave that one to the historians! But at the Times, the summer sex scandals rolled along, as they seem to do every year.

We’ll guess that Mother loved Jimmy Cagney! At any rate, summer sex scandals come in handy when you’re possessed of fatuous values.

When you don't have shinola to write about. When you, like Steve Flemmi, don’t care.

The death of a sensational Baltimore teen!

MONDAY, JULY 22, 2013

What we were talking about: Late last week, we mentioned the fact that the city of Baltimore is full of good, decent, tremendously admirable black kids.

The next day, one day late, we read a front-page Baltimore Sun report about one of those kids who was murdered last week. To all appearances, she was killed by an older teen who had lost his way.

Courtesy of three Sun reporters, this was Diamond Williams, the 16-year-old rising junior at Mergenthaler Tech (Mervo) who was killed last week:

RECTOR, FENTON AND BOWIE (7/20/13): Teachers said Diamond was enrolled in a nursing program and was a cheerleader. She was a member of the school's modeling club and had acted in two school plays, including "Annie," this past year. Her mother said she wanted to pursue a career in theater.

"She was one of the sweetest, best kids I have ever met," said her English teacher, Alicia Van Wert. "I loved having her in class every day. She was going places."

[...]

Terrena Williams, Diamond's mother, said her daughter grew up in the family's neighborhood and thrived at Mergenthaler.

"Diamond was the sweetest person you could know," she said. "She had a good head on her shoulders."

Van Wert, her teacher, described her as a particularly compassionate teenager who volunteered to take charge of two elementary students at the Special Olympics this year.

"She built a relationship with them within the first 10 minutes she was there and set a good example for everyone."

And when the petite girl studied the Holocaust this year, she pleaded with Van Wert to arrange a trip to the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington because she had never been there. When she got there, she was fascinated by the exhibition. "She was very curious about things all the time," Van Wert said.

"She was one of our most promising students," said Angel Watts, an emergency room nurse and a nursing teacher at Mergenthaler. "She had this bubbly, upbeat personality."

When Diamond walked through Mervo's halls, Watts said, she would always say hello, even if she had seen that person a half-hour before. Williams was in a training program to become a nursing assistant and was one of the top students in the class that Watts co-taught.

Watts said Diamond had supportive parents and came to school every day. She was "eager to do what she needed to do to stand out" in her classes.

"She was one of those kids who everybody spoke to. She was such a pleasure to teach. I can't believe this happened to her."

She pleaded for a trip to the Holocaust Museum!

The city of Baltimore is full of good, decent kids. Last week, when we said we think they’re sensational, this portrait is part of what we meant.

There are also many kids in Baltimore who have lost their way, perhaps quite badly, as must have been the case with the 19-year-old who seems to have murdered Williams before killing himself soon thereafter.

We’ve been thinking about those sensational kids in the past few weeks as we listen to the ongoing discussions about the killing of Trayvon Martin. We’ll do a post on the topic each day this week.

But for today, that portrait of Diamond Williams, 16, is part of what we meant last week. What are these good, decent kids being told about the killing of Martin?

THE STORY BEGINS: Two shots were fired in a yellow wood!

MONDAY, JULY 22, 2013

Part 1—The color refers to the journalism: On Sunday, July 14, public editor Margaret Sullivan gave the New York Times high marks for its coverage of the Zimmerman trial.

She briefly discussed the way the Times covered the case last year, when the story rose to national prominence.

As we’ve noted on several occasions, this public editor has become a bit of a cheerleader for her famous employer. This was her general assessment of the Times’ recent trial coverage:

SULLIVAN (7/14/13): While hardly going the way of CNN's near total obsession, :The Times gave the Zimmerman trial a great deal of daily attention, including frequently updated courtroom coverage on the Web.

[...]

The Zimmerman trial coverage was solid. But foremost, The Times has showed its trademark strength with in-depth, enterprising pieces exploring the broader issues of this shooting and its aftermath.

Last week, for example, Lizette Alvarez wrote skillfully about the racial issues that had emerged, noting that ''race lingers awkwardly on the sidelines, scarcely mentioned but impossible to ignore.'' That article appeared on the front page, the first during the trial to do so.

In Sullivan’s view, coverage of the trial was solid, with skillful analysis work. For what it’s worth, we disagree with her view of that Alvarez piece, for reasons we will discuss by the end of the week.

To Sullivan, the trial coverage was solid. As she continued, you gave her assessment of the Times’ performance early last year, when the death of Trayvon Martin became a national story:

SULLIVAN (continuing directly): In the first weeks after Mr. Martin was killed, on Feb. 26, 2012, The Times lagged behind, seeming not to recognize the broader implications and the way the teenager's death had captured public interest. But on April 2 it published an exhaustive and well-written account by four reporters that started on the front page and filled two full pages inside. It explored the polarizing effect of the shooting.

Soon after that, a front-page piece by Serge Kovaleski investigated the police missteps after the shooting. (Some critics of The Times believe its motto should not be ''All the News That's Fit to Print'' but rather ''More, Later.'')

Again, we’ll disagree. The Times published its first news report about the killing of Martin on March 17, 2012. On that same day, Charles Blow published the first of his columns about the case. (Other columns by Blow appeared on March 26, April 7 and April 14.)

Given its role as a national paper, we wouldn’t say that the New York Times was notably late to the story. And trust us: It’s clear that the Times “recognized the broader implications” from its first day on the case.

Alas! The Times’ real failure surfaced, egregiously, in that first news report. Sullivan didn’t mention this problem as she looked back on the Times’ overall performance.

Somehow, Sullivan managed to see no evil, even in the face of some work which was outrageously misshapen. Did we mention the fact that this public editor tends to lead cheers for the Times?

As she continued last Sunday’s assessment, Sullivan turned again to her newspaper’s coverage of the trial itself—and at this point, real insight appeared. Sullivan quoted an editor, Charles Strum, who offered accurate assessments about the challenges posed by this high-profile topic:

SULLIVAN (continuing directly): Given the enormous overload of coverage elsewhere, The Times tried to provide something distinctive. Charles Strum, the deputy national editor handling the story, told me that his aim had been ''to bring more light than heat, because, over all, this is a situation with more heat than light.'' While editing articles in the New York office—most of them written by Ms. Alvarez, the Miami bureau chief—he spent his days wearing headphones so that he could listen to live streaming of the trial.

''There are a lot of accusations, a lot of misinformation and a lot of conspiracy theorizing,'' he said.

Strum's observations were right. Press coverage of the Zimmerman trial did have to deal with a lot of heat and perhaps a bit less light. There has been “a lot of misinformation” surrounding this high-profile case.

Accusations have been widespread, against a range of persons. (Police chief fired! Jurors in hiding!) Conspiracy theories have appeared, if only in comment threads. (George Zimmerman broke his own nose, hurling himself at the sidewalk!)

Strum was right in his observations. Sullivan seemed to think that the Times had lived up to his sensible journalistic concerns. But in the process of praising the Times, Sullivan failed to note a very important fact:

Much of the misinformation which still defines this case entered the journalistic bloodstream through the New York Times! That misinformation dominated the paper’s early reporting, when the Times engaged in some truly egregious misconduct.

This newspaper’s early news reports generated much more heat than light about this deeply unfortunate case. And it’s obvious where reporters were getting their heat, and their misinformation.

Again and again, those bogus facts seem to have come from the Martin family and especially from their attorneys. In the case of the New York Times’ first news report, that includes one false claim so egregious that it ought to shock the conscience.

Let’s repeat that:

The New York Times’ early reporting ought to shock the conscience. That said, the chances are very slight that it will. Meanwhile, Sullivan skipped this egregious misconduct as she issued her typical words of praise for the work of her famous employer.

Your press corps has worked this way for decades, especially at the Times. As we’ll note again later on in the week, all good career liberal players agree not to notice this fact.

All week, we’ll review the New York Times’ early reporting—reporting which included some truly egregious misstatements. We’ll even be able to answer a basic question:

With respect to this high-profile national story, where did the basic parts of the press corps’ Standard Story come from? More specifically, what was the source of the New York Times’ astounding array of misinformation? What was the source of the New York Times' heat-seeking frameworks and language?

The answer to those questions is obvious. Something else is obvious too. Right from its very first news report, the Times engaged in egregious misconduct in its reporting of this case. Its journalistic malpractice should shock the conscience, but almost surely it won’t.

Two shots were fired in a yellow wood! Or so the New York Times reported. The Times attached a lurid suggestion to its egregious false fact.

The color refers to the journalism. But where did that false fact come from?

Tomorrow: For a long list of errors, just click this. But where did those “errors” come from?

SOCIETY DOWN: It’s time for Ben Jealous (and Crowley) to go!

SATURDAY, JULY 20, 2013

Interlude—CNN fails to perform: Geoffrey Canada is a very bright person.

Yesterday, we mentioned a comment he made on CNN about the Zimmerman verdict. “In my world, everybody saw this as open and shut,” he said, referring to the case against Zimmerman.

That was a rather strange comment. Plainly, the legal case against George Zimmerman was never open-and-shut. If Canada was right, why did so many people think otherwise?

Last night, we saw part of the answer. We watched CNN’s State of the Union program from last Sunday, the morning after the verdict.

Candy Crowley hosted the program and refused to perform basic journalism. Even by the low standards of cable, her performance was egregious.

To review the full transcript, click this.

Crowley spoke with a string of guests. With great frequency, these guests offered the simplified version of the killing of Trayvon Martin which has come to dominate many cable discussions.

Early on, she spoke with Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA). Below, you see his repeated account of what happened in Sanford that night:

FATTAH (7/14/13): If you take race out of this, what you have is a young person who died going to buy candy, who was innocent, was not involved in any criminal activity, and a person who officials had asked not to follow him took a gun and killed him. And now, that person will get his gun back. George Zimmerman will get that gun back.

He will be out, and I think the notion that the jury is saying to him that if he did the same thing again today, or tomorrow, or next week, or someone else did it, that there would be no punishment is not a great signal to send.

CROWLEY: So, you think the signal is that this was an injustice. You think there should have been a guilty verdict? Is that what you're saying to me?

FATTAH: I think that there's an innocent boy dead. A person was asked not to follow him and he took a gun and killed him. And yes, I think that there should be been a punishment for that and moreover, the fact this this gentleman will have his gun back, or others like him could go out and do the same thing tomorrow with a belief that our criminal justice system has now said that that's perfectly fine.

That that set of facts are fine. That if someone tells you not to follow a kid, that you follow him, that you get out of your car and you shoot him and you kill him, that that's OK.

Three times, Fattah offered this account of what happened in Sanford that night:

A young, innocent person went to buy candy. A person was asked not to follow him and he took a gun and killed him.

If Canada’s friends have heard that account, the case would of course seem to be open and shut. This is the obvious problem:

Fattah omitted the facts which made it clear, all along, that this case wouldn’t be open and shut. If Fattah has been offering that account to his constituents, those people have been misled.

Fattah was hardly the only guest who offered this bowdlerized account of what happened that night. Later, Crowley brought out her “legal panel,” with Tom Mesereau saying this:

MESEREAU: First of all, the case absolutely should have been prosecuted. You have an innocent 17-year-old doing exactly what he had every right to do who was gunned down as a teenager. I mean, come on. The case should have been brought and in many other jurisdictions and many other juries would have convicted Zimmerman in my opinion. I agree he had outstanding defense attorneys, Mark O'Mara and Don West did a terrific job. You also had very, very good prosecutors who were very passionate and dedicated to what they did but this case could have gone the other way somewhere else. The facts were there. This man took a gun. He wasn't a police officer. He decided to follow someone when he was advised not to. He set the stage for an altercation and then he shot this young boy dead who was doing nothing wrong.

This was Mesereau’s account of what happened:

An innocent 17-year-old who was doing nothing wrong was gunned down, shot dead.

That certainly sounds like it's open and shut! Illinois governor Pat Quinn added a familiar element:

QUINN: I agree with Trayvon Martin's father that his heart is broken. My heart is broken. And our faith is not broken, as Mr. Martin said. It's important that we really look at this stand your ground law. I don't think that's a good law. We don't have it in Illinois, and we don't want it. And I think also the idea of individuals with guns that are concealed that are told by the police not to do something, violating that police order, there's something really wrong when that happens. And I think lots and lots of people across our country feel that way.

Quinn’s heart didn’t seem to be broken. He was soon clowning about the greatness of the Blackhawks and the Bulls and predicting his own re-election. But he added a basic point to the account Crowley’s viewers received:

Zimmerman was violating a police order when he shot Martin.

If Canada’s friends kept hearing this account of the facts, they might naturally assume that the case was open and shut. Unfortunately, Fattah, Mesereau and Quinn were all misleading those people.

Crowley’s viewers were repeatedly told that Martin was doing nothing wrong at the time he was shot. But uh-oh! During the trial, the jury was told by the defense that Martin was banging Zimmerman’s head on concrete moments before he was shot. And the best-positioned eyewitness testified that Martin was beating Zimmerman MMA-style shortly before he was shot.

Now, we reach the incredible part. In the full hour of Crowley’s program, that claim and that testimony were never mentioned! The injuries sustained by Zimmerman were never mentioned either.

The injuries and the testimony meant that this case wasn't open and shut. But these basic elements of the case went AWOL from Crowley's show.

At the very start of the program, Crowley referred to Zimmerman’s “claim that he shot Martin in self-defense early last year.” But as her guests kept offering simplified accounts of what happened in Sanford that night, Crowley never asked them to reconcile their accounts with what is known about Zimmerman’s injuries or with the eyewitness testimony.

Those are the facts and the evidence which kept this case from being open and shut. On Crowley’s hour-long program, they simply didn’t exist.

On Crowley’s part, this represented a refusal to perform the basic tasks of her profession. When her guests gave highly simplistic accounts of the facts, she cast herself in the role of potted plant.

How absurd was Crowley’s overall performance? She opened one segment with videotape of James Davis, an angry Sanford activist. In this exchange, we see two basic elements of an ongoing media gong-show:

DAVIS (videotape): And we got a jury from this county, and ironically, the jury that they chose was a jury that didn't include any blacks at all, but I understand that that jury may have some Hispanics on it.

CROWLEY: That was community activist, James Davis, responding to the verdict. CNN's Alina Machado is in a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Sanford, Florida getting reaction. So, Alina, what reaction have you gotten?

If Davis was acting in good faith, he had paid so little attention to the trial that he didn’t even know the composition of the jury.

Incredibly, Crowley let his statement go. Instead of correcting his bogus, somewhat race-baiting statement, she threw to correspondent Alina Machado, who prefigured Canada’s later statement:

“People here seem to be in shock,” Machado said. We were out here right after the not guilty verdict came down and people were walking around. There was a very small group that had gathered near a house where there had been a verdict watch party in this community and that small group was primarily shocked. They were walking around kind of with a dazed look on their face. There were some people who were very angry.”

Why were those people shocked by the verdict? Could it be because they’ve been played—because they’ve persistently been misinformed about the full range of facts and evidence in this case? This case was never open and shut, unless you listened to the childish accounts offered by people like Mesereau and Fattah, with “journalists” like Crowley refusing to do their jobs.

This case was never open and shut, except within the lines of a tightly constricted version of what happened. If we want to be honest about it, it isn’t clear that Trayvon Martin was “doing exactly what he had every right to do” at the time he was shot.

But average people were told that, again and again, by roving bands of demagogues. People like Crowley and Anderson Cooper allowed them to do it. In the process, they were refusing to do their jobs.

Crowley’s first guest this day was Benjamin Jealous, head of the NAACP. Jealous may be well-intentioned and thoroughly decent, but he sometimes gets things wrong.

The last time we looked in on Jealous, he was pummeling Shirley Sherrod after Tom Vilsack fired her. On Crowley’s program, he worried about what young people will think about this case and the verdict:

JEALOUS: And we should listen for our young people and search with them when they ask, “How is it that young Trayvon Martin could be killed by George Zimmerman and George Zimmerman gets no time when Michael Vick got two and a half ears for killing dogs?” When a domestic violence victim in northern Florida shot warning shots in the air over the head of her attacker and got 20 years.

CROWLEY: Right.

JEALOUS: And it's important that we take the feelings of our young people very seriously, and we help them sort through this.

Yes, he actually said that.

Newsflash: This country is full of good, decent kids of every race and ethnicity. This country is full of good, decent black kids.

We see them in Baltimore every day. We think they're sensational.

All kids face hurdles on the way to becoming adults. Our nation’s brutal history gives black kids an extra set of hurdles.

Jealous may be the world’s nicest person. We will assume that he’s well-intentioned. But one of the problems these young people face involves the leadership of people like Jealous. These leaders simply won’t give them the full range of facts about what happened in Sanford that night, or about why the jury may have ruled as it did.

Why did Zimmerman get no time when Vick got two years for killing dogs! Let us guess that very few kids are asking that question without being prompted by Jealous!

There is an answer to that question, but it wasn’t permitted on Crowley’s program. People who love and respect black kids would ask Jealous and Crowley and so many others to move aside, go home, step down.

Crowley’s full rebuttal: Again and again, Crowley’s guests gave grossly simplified accounts of what happened in Sanford that night. Below, the highlighted passage represents Crowley’s lone attempt at rebuttal:

CROWLEY: So, you think the signal is that this was an injustice. You think there should have been a guilty verdict? Is that what you're saying to me?

FATTAH: I think that there's an innocent boy dead. A person was asked not to follow him and he took a gun and killed him. And yes, I think that there should be been a punishment for that and more over, the fact this this gentleman will have his gun back or others like him could go out and do the same thing tomorrow with a belief that our criminal justice system has now said that that's perfectly fine.

That that set of facts are fine. That if someone tells you not to follow a kid, that you follow him, that you get out of your car and you shoot him and you kill him, that that's OK.

CROWLEY: But the following was not a crime, obviously, and the killing, at least according to the jury was not. But Congressman Grijalva, help us here. Do you think that the U.S. justice system continues to be a racial divide that whites get a far better deal in the justice system than African-Americans?

In the entire hour, that highlighted statement represents Crowley’s lone attempt to challenge the Simplified Story which is being peddled to average people and even to children.

Following Martin was not a crime, the helpless non-journalist said. Because she refuses to do her job, it's time for this person to go.