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Media Coverage and Public Opinion about Trayvon Martin's death

The role of race in the Trayvon Martin story is the greatest point of contention for Americans but a low priority for many types of media. Only the blogosphere prioritized race in their discourse about the incident, cable news and talk radio focused on gun control, and Twitter primarily called for justice for Trayvon and his family.

Trayvon Martin, a 17 year old black boy carrying skittles and soda was shot to death by an self-appointed neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman on February 26th. Attention to the story though did not surge until nearly three weeks later, when it became the most watched/discussed story for two second consecutive weeks. The focus of the media discourse about the incident varied greatly among cable and talk radio, the blogosphere, and Twitter, at least between March 17 − 28, the period examined in a media audit by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

 Trayvon Martin, a 17 year-old black boy walking home was shot to death by a self-appointed neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman on February 26th. Attention to the story though did not surge until nearly three weeks later, when it became the most closely followed and most covered story in the media for at least second consecutive weeks. The focus of the discourse around Trayvon Martin’s death varied greatly among cable news and talks radio, the blogosphere, and Twitter, at least between March 17 − 28, the period examined in a media audit by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

 

On Twitter, the conversation, which included millions of tweets during a period of 11 days examined, focused heavily on calls for justice and sympathy for the victim and his family. On the blogosphere, the top theme of the conversation was the role of race in the shooting, which was followed by calls for justice. Cable news and talk radio overall

On cable news and talk radio, the focus differed by the ideological leaning of each medium. MSNBC, which has a liberal leaning, addressed primarily gun control issues, including Florida’s “Stand Your Own Ground” and secondarily, racial discrimination by Sanford’s police force and its rocky social history. CNN and FOX, who spent significantly less time covering the story than MSNBC, focused on questions about Martin and defending Zimmerman (Pew study).

As far as media audiences are concerned, interest in the Martin's death was deeply divided along partisan and racial lines. Far more Republicans (56%) than Democrats (25%) say there has been too much coverage of Martin’s death.
Forty-three percent of white people say there has been too much coverage, compared to 16 percent of African-Americans. Overall, opinions are about tied — 37 percent say there has been too much coverage, 40 percent say it’s about right.

These differences were even more pronounced in the Americans' opinion about the incident.  Headlines about the racial division of Americans' reaction to the shooting of Trayvon Martin, a 17 year old black boy, have dominated the world of media polling. The race or ethnicity of Americans defines their opinions about this incident in similar ways that they define their opinions about other issues. It is also true that black and white people’s opinions have been progressively converging in the past recent couple of decades. In part, because the country has made significant progress in decreasing racial disparities and discrimination while improving black-white relations, and in part because the predominant media narrative has long been that equality has been achieved and that discrimination is isolated to individual actions, a few bad “apples,” rather than embedded in our laws, institutions, and other social structures [Frameworks]. Many current disparities against black people, such us harsher sentencing by judges (Rachlinski et al., 2009), lower likelihood of being admitted to school (Kang, 2005), and a higher likelihood of being shot by police (Entman, 2006), receive limited attention from the media.

Important to mention that attitudes on equal treatment of blacks in the criminal justice system have not changed since the early 1990s (as the ABC polling unit confirms). Most blacks see discrimination but whites are divided although still 44 percept of the latter agree that blacks do not receive the same treatment as while. These opinions were altered only temporarily following the OJ Simpson event and coverage (LINK HERE) to more whites thinking that there is equal treatment. No affect from the coverage of Travon Martin's death has been observed yet in the polls and it might be indicative.