NBC’s Zimmerman response: Other media outlets highlighted race (Trayvon Martin case)

NBC doesn’t want to deal with George Zimmerman’s libel suit. In a Feb. 20 filing in the case, NBC Universal Media LLC asks a Florida circuit court to stay the case until the conclusion of Zimmerman’s June trial for second-degree murder of Trayvon Martin.

To recap Zimmerman’s case against NBC News: On the night that he shot Martin, Zimmerman called 911 and narrated his pursuit of the teenager in his gated community in Sanford, Fla. A March 27 edition of the “Today” show abridged the 911 tape, as follows:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about. Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic? Zimmerman: He looks black.

There’s a black-and-white difference between those two treatments. In the first, Zimmerman is an out-and-out racial profiler. In the second, he’s just a guy answering reasonable questions from an emergency dispatcher....

To abridge, NBC News is saying it has some company.

. . . which is precisely what the Zimmerman lawsuit should attack. That’s not an excuse, it’s a conspiracy. “The mainstream media” is merely a weak circumlocution for the Associated Press. And Adam Smith told us what to expect from that bunch over two centuries ago:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Wealth of Nations, Book I, Ch 10
The AP “wire” is nothing but a continuous virtual meeting of all the members of the AP, which has been running continuously since the middle of the Nineteenth Century. Nothing could be more natural than that the members of the AP would conspire against the public in general and George Zimmerman in particular.
The article goes on to suggest that Zimmerman’s case against NBC would be mooted if the case were held back until after the murder trial, and Zimmerman were convicted. I consider that to be a very superficial analysis. After all, who thinks that the propaganda campaign against Zimmerman, including four-year-old picture of innocence Trayvon Martin, had nothing to do with the fact that Zimmerman is in the docket at all???
And whatever happened to the inalienable right of a guilty Democrat (and Zimmerman is a Democrat who has been turned into an “honorary” white Republican) to try to beat the rap? After all, that was what Bill Clintons’ mounting a defense in the Paula Jones case was all about. Not about “see[ing] that the law be faithfully executed” - the duty of a president - but about exercising the right of a private citizen to try to beat the rap.

NBC was counting on this going to an immunity hearing in April where this judge would obviously deny immunity and send it on to a jury trial.

Such a decision by this judge would have prejudiced the jury pool giving the prosecution [and NBC] a better chance for a conviction.

But now there will be no April immunity hearing and the onus is on the state to present its now highly compromised Witness 8 as the foundation of its case.

She may now make it past her deposition.

NBC chose poorly. They will now have to dig deeper into their own pockets.

Still waiting to see the indictments for the folks that put a million dollar “dead or alive” warrant out on Zimmerman. Isn’t that a felony in FL?
7 posted on March 8, 2013 7:14:36 AM EST by wesagain

It’s a felony in all 50 states, I imagine.

The issue regarding NBC is that it is government-licensed journalism, and there needs to be higher standards for objectivity of licensed journalism than anything the broadcast networks have ever imagined being subject to. Do we want the government micromanaging that? Of course not - but the problem which is killing this republic is that the government licenses journalism outlets which listen to each other and read the newspapers whose editors also not only read each other but which communicate among themselves continuously via the AP newswire. Adam Smith described the inevitable result of that much communication among “competitors” - "the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” Only the AP “conversation” does not even end, ever.
So we don’t want the Attorney General deciding what is objective and what is not, we don’t want a “fairness” doctrine enforced by the FCC. But that does not exclude a private citizen’s suing that whole cabal, including the FCC - and calling them to account in civil court precisely for defining “objectivity” as if it were their divine right to define it to suit their own convenience. Posting a reward for “dead or alive” apprehension of a presumptively innocent American is on its very face criminally advertising for a “hit.” And nobody in any major journalism outlet can find a voice to say so? Not even in a letter to the Editor???
Beyond that, we have a case where the prosecution is political, and the jury pool is not necessarily such that it will be possible to railroad a conviction - so do riots come next? And if so, are the broadcasters actually expecting to be able to report on that as a “great story” which they sanctimoniously claim has nothing to do with the fact that, de facto, they have advertised for that to happen? If they try that stunt they should be sued into oblivion. It should be a class-action suit by all victims of any rioting, and it should be a RICO lawsuit for triple damages.
And there have already reportedly been cases of assaults by thugs declaring themselves to “be” Trayvon Martin . . .

Of course NBC doesn’t want to face a trial before Zimmerman is railroaded. They know that a conviction will help their case. They also do not want to lose and give Zimmerman money for his defense.

Just as an aside if he wins the NBC suit it will also help his criminal case by making a jury believe he is innocent.

Agreed. Whereas, in fact, Zimmerman obviously should prevail in the his civil suit, regardless of his actual guilt or innocence of the criminal charges.
NBC did what they did, with malice. In reality they did it to you and me, when they labeled George Zimmerman “white” and treated him exactly as if he were a Republican.

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