L.A. Times’ Abcarian’s biased reporting on Zimmerman trial

July 15, 2013

By John Seiler

Los Angeles is dealing with massive protests and possibly violence after the not guilty verdict in the murder trial of George Zimmerman. But instead of trying to calm things down, the Los Angeles Times is stirring them up with Robin Abcarian’s column, “The ugly rehabilitation of George Zimmerman has begun.” It’s the latest in a series of biased articles she’s written on the case.

Here’s the picture at the top of her new article:

That’s the picture of Martin when he was 12 years old, five years before the incident in question.

Here’s a later picture of him:

Big difference.

If you’re a guy, imagine the difference in your life between when you were 12 and when you were 17. You’re bigger, more muscular, more aggressive.

Ladies, remember the difference you saw in your brother, son or boyfriend.

If you’re still in doubt, go to your local high school and watch the boys on the football team practicing, which they are now for the fall season.

One of my Facebook friends wrote that his grandfather, at 17, was storming the beaches as a U.S. Marine at Okinawa. Col. David Hackworth, the most decorated American soldier at the time of his death in 2005, at 14 lied about his age in 1945, and fought in the U.S. Army in the last days of World War II in Northern Italy.

Even today, you can join the U.S. military at age 17, albeit with your parents’ permission.

For Abcarian, and so many others, to portray Martin as a slight, skinny 12-year-old, even after the trial is over, is outrageous and journalistic malpractice. A main reason we have football, baseball, basketball, soccer and other sports — and Jr. ROTC, Boy Scouts, and other activities — is to channel the aggression every normal late-teenage boy has. When necessary, it’s channeled into the military to defend our country.

Not guilty

What Abcarian and so many others don’t acknowledge is that the prosecution never even came close to proving its case against Zimmerman. In fact, as even such liberals as Geraldo Rivera and Alan Dershowitz have pointed out, the case always was so weak it never should have been brought to trial.

I watched most of the case, including the closing arguments, and the prosecution case always was flimsy. The whole thing was a bunch of “maybes.” Which isn’t enough to convict someone “beyond a reasonable doubt” and send him to prison where he almost certainly would have been killed by vengeful inmates.

We’ll never know exactly what happened. And it remains terrible that Martin died.

But what most likely happened is that Zimmerman followed Martin some of the way that fateful nibht. But Martin, being young and athletic, easily could have run away from the pudgy Zimmerman. (He was pudgy even before his weight gain after his arrest.) Instead, Martin closed in, hammered Zimmerman with a chop across the nose, then jumped on the older man and hammered his head into the concrete. Zimmerman, fearing he would be killed, then pulled his gun and shot Martin.

Police tape

Abcarian also pooh-poohed the doctoring of the police tape to make it look as if Zimmerman was doing a racial profile, when he wasn’t. She wrote:

“In particular, [brother Robert Zimmerman Jr.] has hammered the media for creating a ‘false narrative’ about his brother, reserving special contempt for NBC, which edited the tape of George’s call to Sanford police to make it sound as if he offered up the information that Trayvon Martin was black, when in fact, a police operator asked him to describe the young man he was following. That was a huge blunder on NBC’s part.”

Blunder? Or intentional distortion? A lawsuit by George Zimmerman against NBC might bring out the truth.

But whatever happened, I remember early on how that NBC tape totally racialized the reporting on the story, and its public perception.

Nowhere in Abcarian’s article does she write that Zimmerman is a Hispanic (or Latino). The closest she comes is noting, in parentheses, “The Zimmermans’ father is white; their mother is Peruvian.” 

In America today, the rule is that you decide yourself your own ethnicity. Thus, President Obama’s mother was white and his father was black; but he identifies himself as black. Zimmerman always has identified himself as “Hispanic.” Why doesn’t Abcarian?

Because if he’s Hispanic, then it’s hard to portray him as some kind of white supremacist. Although the Nation magazine actually has done so in an article entitled, “White Supremacy Acquits George Zimmerman.” Amazing. In the old days before the FBI infiltrated it in the 1960s, the Ku Klux Klan would have lynched Zimmerman for being both Hispanic and Catholic.

Federal case?

The FBI also has thoroughly investigated the case and found that Zimmerman was “not a racist.” That’s why I think President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, although they continue to look into the case, will not bring federal civil rights charges against Zimmerman.

With all the other scandals swirling around this administration — Snowden, Fast and Furious, IRS harassment — they have enough headaches already.

A case against Zimmerman could end up going before a Republican federal judge. But even a Democratic federal judge would be more impartial, and competent, than was Judge Nelson in the Florida trial.

Discovery would be brutal for the prosecution because everything the FBI has found out, not just about Zimmerman but about Martin, would come out.

Worse, a trial could happen in 2014, just before the mid-term elections. Republican candidates would point to Zimmerman’s acquittal by a jury, and ask why Obama-Holder were piling on.

Say what you will about Obama and his team, but winning two national elections shows how politically savvy they are. So they’re likely to wait a few months to keep happy Abcarian and the other liberals baying for Zimmerman’s blood, then drop the case on late Dec. 20, the Friday before Christmas week when nobody’s paying attention to the news, citing the FBI as an excuse.