Martin v. Zimmerman

There are a lot of times in the media where the wrong story is given to the public. The story that a lot of people hear is often the best story, not the truth.There is unfortunately a lot of distortion that occurs in the media because of this.

Below, I listed an article that puts what I am talking about into perspective.

Trayvon Martin Case

When this case was a bigger spotlight in the media, there were many controversial aspects that surrounded it. One of them,is referred to as framing. Framing is essentially when the author of the article chooses an aspect of a topic and makes it stand out more. It has four elements; the problem, the cause, moral evaluation, and the solution. The problem in the article that I linked is that they talk about the pictures of the victim and the perpetrator. The victim, Trayvon Martin, is depicted in his picture taken by his family as a sweet and innocent teen. On the other hand, Zimmerman's picture shows him from a previous mugshot and the article states that he looks "puffy and downcast". This is the cause of the problem. The news station framed Zimmerman to clearly look like he was completely guilty. There is another problem that lies within this article. For instance, the article reads that NBC altered some of Zimmerman's comments during a phone call to make it sound as though he is racist. This is another cause for the problem because the news station is clearly framing Zimmerman again.

Our moral evaluation would consist of a couple of things. There are many people who think that the only reason that Trayvon Martin was shot is because he was black, and Zimmerman was racist. Other people believe that Zimmerman had a right to be suspicious and he had the right to shoot him. There are multiple sides to the story. There are other examples where different authors switched the scenario, changed the story, and altered what really happened that night between Martin and Zimmerman.

The treatment would be that people stop assuming what happened and what didn't happen. It's important to consider trying to stop assuming things about situations that you haven't educated yourself about.

It is clear in many articles written on this case that the author has chosen a side an is inevitably biased in his writing, which makes framing more likely in his/her writing. Framing is very misleading to the public. So what do we do about this?

We, as viewers, need to be skeptical when reading stories from the media. It is beneficial to us, as consumers, to read different sides of the story and educate ourselves about what's really happening. There will always be some sort of controversy that is associated with the Martin and Zimmerman case. There will always be some sort of framing that occurs, as well. What's important is to be educated. It's important to be able to identify framing and to know that there's always two sides to the story.