Since June 10, CNN has carried one story above all others: The trial of self-appointed “neighborhood watchman” George Zimmerman for the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
On CNN, especially, the coverage of this trial has been overwhelming.
So much so that CNN–Cable News Network–could rightly be called TNN–Trayvon News Network.
There are several reasons for this, and they say as much–if not more–about the media as they do about the case itself.
First, there was a dead body in the story–the body of Travon Martin. There’s a well-known saying in the news business: “If it bleeds, it leads.” And nothing bleeds like the body of a dead teenager.
Second, the victim was not only dead, he was black.
Third, he died at the hands of a nominally-white man–George Zimmerman, the offspring of a German father and a Peruvian mother.
Although the vast majority of blacks in the United States are murdered by other blacks, it’s Politically Incorrect to say so. On the other hand, it’s perfectly OK to create the impression that whites pose the greatest danger to blacks.
George Zimmerman
Fourth, the trial was televised. There was absolutely no need for this. It didn’t threaten to overturn existing law–as did Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court struck down “separate but equal” public schools for blacks and whites.
This case proved the opening legal salvo in the history of the civil rights movement and ushered in a decade of activism and bloodshed as blacks sought to de-segregate the South.
Nor did the Zimmerman case even carry the weight of the 1985-6 Mafia Commission trial. There Federal prosecutors convicted the heads of the five most powerful Mafia “families” in the country and sent them to prison.
While individual Mafiosi had been sent to prison, this was the first time the top leadership of all major Mafia “families” had been virtually wiped out.
It signaled a turning point in the fight against organized crime, with Federal investigators and prosecutors finally learning how to use the 10-year-old Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act to their advantage.
Fifth, televising the trial meant the networks–especially CNN–didn’t have to do anything. They didn’t have to send reporters into the streets to dig up information. All that was necessary was to let the camera show what was happening in the courtroom.
Sixth, when each day’s televised proceedings came to an end, CNN and other networks could easily round up a series of “talking heads” to pontificate on the meaning of it all.
These people had no more idea than the average viewer of what impact–if any–that day’s events would have on the legal fate of George Zimmerman.
But it gave CNN a chance to use up airtime that could have otherwise gone on stories like the national debt, Detroit declaring bankruptcy and the Supreme Court rejecting an Arizona law requiring voters to prove their citizenship.
Seventh, the networks could count on a controversial outcome no matter what the verdict.
If Zimmerman were convicted, his white supporters would be outraged and his black detractors overjoyed. And if Zimmerman were acquitted–which is what actually happened–then the opposite reactions would occur.
Either way, there was certain to be angry demonstrators in the street. For the networks this would hopefully include a full replay of the race riots which shook the nation following the police beating of Rodney King in 1992 and the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968.
Eighth, if rioting erupted, CNN and other networks would rush news cameras to the scenes of carnage and claim they were doing this “in the finest traditions of journalism” to keep the public fully informed.
In reality, they would be doing it to keep their ratings up.
If any of this seems familiar, it’s because–unfortunately–it is.
The 1995 O.J. Simpson trial set the standard for televised murder trials.
It came complete with a weak-kneed judge (Lance Ito), incompetent prosecutors (Christopher Darden and Marcia Clark), bizarre witnesses (Kato Kaelin) and grandstanding defense attorneys (Johnnie Cochran, F. Lee Bailey and Robert Kardashian).
The case seemed to go on forever. The primary jury was sworn in on November 2, 1994. Opening statements began on January 24, 1995, and the trial dragged on until a “Not Guilty” verdict came on October 3, 1995
For those who enjoy wallowing in sensationalism, the case offered everything:
- Interracial marriage;
- A famous has-been football player;
- Sexually-charged domestic abuse (in this case, black-on-white/male-on-female violence);
- A dead, beautiful blonde;
- Two grisly murders (those of Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole, and a waiter-friend of hers, Ronald Goldman);
- Allegations by Simpson’s lawyers that he was the target of white, racist police.
Since then, television networks have repeatedly sought stories that promise to deliver the thrills–if not actual news value–of the Simpson case.
The George Zimmerman trial didn’t offer the ratings voltage of the Simpson one. But the networks did their best to make it happen.
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JFK: FIFTY YEARS AFTER DALLAS: PART ONE (OF TEN)
In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on August 15, 2013 at 11:16 amNovember 22, 2013, will mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
It’s one of those infamous dates that its eyewitnesses will never forget–in a class with
Some have called the Kennedy adminsitration a golden era in American history.
A time when touch football, lively White House parties, stimulus to the arts and the antics of the President’s children became national obsessions.
Others have called the Kennedy Presidency a monument to the unchecked power of wealth and ambition. An administration staffed by young novices playing at statesmen, riddled with nepotism, and whose legacy includes the Bay of Pigs, the Vietnam war and the world’s first nuclear confrontation.
While Americans continue to disagree about the legacy of JFK, there is no disagreement that his Presidency came to a sudden and shocking end just two years, ten months and two days after it had all begun.
The opening days of the Kennedy Presidency raised hopes for a dramatic change in relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.
But detente was not possible then. The Russians had not yet experienced their coming agricultural problems and the setback in Cuba during the Missile Crisis. And the United States had not suffered reversals in Vietnam.
Kennedy’s first brush with international Communism came on April 17, 1961, with the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. This operation had been planned and directed by the Central Intelligence Agency during the final months of the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
About 1,400 Cuban exiles were to be landed on the island to overthrow the Communist government of Fidel Castro. They were supposed to head into the mountains–as Castro himself had done against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1956–and raise the cry of revolution.
The U.S. Navy would supply transport after an American air strike had knocked out the Cuban air force. But the airstrike failed and Kennedy, under the pressure of world opinion, called off a second try.
Even so, the invasion went ahead. When the invaders surged onto the beaches, they found Castro’s army waiting for them. Many of the invaders were killed on the spot. Others were captured–to be ransomed by the United States in December, 1962, in return for medical supplies.
It was a major public relations setback for the newly-installed Kennedy administration, which has raised hopes for a change in American-Soviet relations.
Kennedy, trying to abort widespread criticism, publicly took the blame for the setback: “There’s an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan. Further statements, detailed discussions, are not to conceal responsibility because I’m the responsible officer of the Government.”
The Bay of Pigs convinced Kennedy that he had been misled by the CIA and the Joint Chieifs of Staff. Out of this came his decision that, from now on, he would rely more heavily on the counsel of his brother, Robert, whom he had installed as Attorney General.
Another consequence of the failed Cuban invasion: It convinced Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev that Kennedy was weak.
Khrushchev told an associate that he could understand if Kennedy had not decided to invade Cuba. But once he did, Kennedy should have gone all the way and wiped out Castro.
Khrushchev attributed this to Kennedy’s youth, inexperience and timidity–and believed he could bully the President.
On June 4, 1961, Kennedy met with Khrushchev in Vienna to discuss world tensions. Khrushchev threatened to go to nuclear war over the American presence in West Berlin–the dividing line between Western Europe, protected by the United States, and Eastern Europe, controlled by the Soviet Union.
Kennedy, who prized rationality above all else, was shaken by Knhrushchev’s unexpected rage. Emerging from the conference, he told an associate: “It’s going to be a cold winter.”
Meanwhile, East Berliners felt the door was about to slam on their access to West Berlin, and a flood of 3,000 refugees daily poured into West Germany.
Khrushchev was clearly embarrassed at this clear showing of the unpopularity of the Communist regime. In August, he orderd that a concrete wall–backed up by barbed wire, searchlights and armed guards–be erected to seal off East Berlin.
That same year, when tensions mounted and a Soviet invasion of West Berlin seemed likely, Kennedy sent additional troops to the city in a massive demonstration of American will.
Two years later, in June, 1963, during a 10-day tour of Europe, Kennedy visited Berlin to deliver his “I am a Berlinner” speech to a frenzied crowd of thousands.
JFK adddresses crowds at the Berlin Wall
Standing within gunshot of the Berlin wall, he lashed out at the Soviet Union and praised the citizens of West Berlin for being “on the front lines of freedom” for more than 20 years.
“All free men, wherever they may live,” said Kennedy, “are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, ‘Ich ben ein Berlinner.'”
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