To this end the media and others on the left have acted like nothing so much as a lynch mob. Ben Shapiro at breitbart.com provides the litany of transgressions against decency and justice that have been heaped upon Zimmerman from the very beginning of his ordeal:
On Monday, CNN showed George Zimmerman’s Social Security number and other personal information live over the air, including address, date of birth, and phone number. Officer Doris Singleton was testifying when the prosecutors showed a narrative report including Zimmerman’s information.Shapiro could also have included the bounty that was placed on Zimmerman by the execrable New Black Panthers in Florida, the threats they made against his life, and the fear that his entire family has been living in since the shooting.
That immediately launched a round of tweets by Zimmerman haters celebrating knowledge of that information.
This is hardly the first time Zimmerman’s personal information has been distributed by those who oppose him. During the initial coverage of the Zimmerman trial, Spike Lee retweeted the home address of what he thought was Zimmerman’s home address. It turned out to be the wrong address. Roseanne Barr then tweeted Zimmerman’s parents’ home address. “If Zimmerman isn't arrested I'll rt his address again. maybe go 2 his house myself,” Barr tweeted.
This isn't the first element of media bias in the Zimmerman case, either. The Associated Press originally reported that Zimmerman was white. That falsehood was repeated for days by the media, heightening the racial aspect of the case.
The media also broadcast photographs of Zimmerman from a 2005 arrest rather than current photos, and conversely broadcast photographs of Martin as a pre-teen, not the 17-year-old he was at the time of the killing (the media's photographic choices actually impacted witness testimony during the trial).
NBC News manipulated tape of Zimmerman's 911 call to make it seem that Zimmerman had targeted Martin because he was black, rather than responding to 911 dispatcher questions. CNN also isolated audio of Zimmerman purportedly calling Martin a racial slur during the call -- an allegation that ended up being completely false.
Both ABC News and NBC News also alleged that Zimmerman's injuries did not exist, releasing badly-pixellated photographs from the night of the incident. As trial testimony has shown, Zimmerman was indeed injured during the incident with Martin.
I don't know whether Zimmerman was acting in self-defense when he shot Martin or whether he initiated the fight between Martin and himself, but many on the left already have their minds made up. If you're white, or even, as in Zimmerman's case, approximately white, and you harm a young black man then you're ipso facto guilty of racist motivations and therefore deserve to be treated with all the contempt society can summon regardless of what the actual facts of the case might be.
Of course, the reverse is not true because everyone knows that when blacks harm whites, an event which occurs with startling frequency in this country, that's never motivated by racism because blacks can't be racists because racism is something that only whites are afflicted with, and if you disagree with this that's proof that you yourself are a racist, and even if the black aggressor does hate whites it's understandable because blacks' ancestors were slaves two hundred years ago, etc., etc.
And so it goes in the wonderful Wonderland world liberal social thinking has created.
