ABCNews Retracts Claim That George Zimmerman Wasn't Injured?

If you remember, ABCNews ran a police-station surveillance video of the night George Zimmerman was brought in for questioning, right after the shooting. The video, they claimed, did not show injuries.

There were a couple of problems with this assertion. The first was that ABCNews threw a useless chyron over the most important image on the tape -- over George Zimmerman's head -- prompting the question: Why would you obscure what you claim is tell tale evidence?

For another thing, if you look at the tape without that chyron blocking your view, you can see something that looks like a gash on the back of his head.

Well, the Orlando Sentinel says ABCNews showed a new version of the tape and it appears that Zimmerman's head is in fact gashed, just as thought.

Reporter Matt Gutman said the clearer video shows "what appear to be a pair of gashes or welts on George Zimmerman's head."

Neighborhood Watch volunteer Zimmerman has said he shot 17-year-old Trayvon in self-defense. The video shows Zimmerman arriving at the Sanford Police Department within an hour after the shooting.

Gutman said the video had been "clarified" by Forensic Protection Inc. Former FBI Special Agent Brad Garrett told ABC that the clearer video shows "marks on the back of Mr. Zimmerman's head."

By the way, that's the same reporter who claimed there were no signs of injury on Zimmerman -- and aggressively attacked people who said otherwise on Twitter.

(Incidentally, he also Tweeted the headline: Bloggers Cherry-Pick From Social Media to Cast Trayvon Martin as a Menace. In other words, they plucked out the stuff that suggested criminality or bad behavior, and ignored stuff like "thank you for wishing me a happy birthday."

Um, you're saying we should report stuff like "thank you for wishing me a happy birthday"? That's cherry-picking?

Isn't that a very basic type of news judgment? Stuff that everyone says is not newsworthy. Atypical stuff is newsworthy. And in a case where the media has cast Trayvon Martin as a choirboy who, and this is the critical part, would never behave aggressively or start a fight, it is relevant that he seems to enjoyed pot and maybe some burglary too.)

And a neighbor (unnamed) says Zimmerman was bruised and bandaged the next day.

"I saw George. He was banged up. His head had two big bandages, that weren't flat, had a bump on them," the neighbor, who did not want to be identified, said.

He described where the injuries were.

"I seen him have a big bandage on his nose and his nose swollen. On the side, where his eyes were at, it was swollen," he said.

Just One Minute says the walkbacks are becoming a stampede.

The media cooks all these stories, and then acts arrogant and belligerent when we notice they're cooking these stories. That makes them angry.

You're calling me a LIAR?!!?!, screamed the guy who just lied to your face.

Meanwhile, CNN ignores a witness -- "John," a neighbor -- who says that Trayvon was on top of Zimmerman, and pushes a witness who says the opposite.

Sort of. Actually, this witness did not even see the scuffle, but only came over to see what was going on after the gunshot. At that point, she saw Zimmerman above Trayvon-- but how could it be otherwise? Trayvon was dead.

CNN claims that John is the "only witness" who supports Zimmerman's account. But this woman, Mary Cutcher, did not see the scuffle by her own testimony. She guesses it was Trayvon crying out, because the crying out ended with the gunshot-- but that's an inference, and it is easily explainable that Zimmerman might have been crying out but stopped when he pulled the trigger. After all, he just plugged a guy in the heart.

Why would he continue crying out? For help in moving the body?

Despite the fact that "John," who witnessed the whole scuffle, says that Trayvon was on top and Zimmerman was crying out for help, CNN has enlisted "experts" to analyze the 911 calls and they have determined conclusively tentatively that they cannot say Zimmerman was crying out.

Tom Maguire notes that voice-analysts own protocols call for them getting the suspected subject to speak the same lines as those on the tape being analyzed, with the same level of excitement. That is, if you're trying to see if a guy is the one who screamed "HELP ME" on tape, you ask him to scream "HELP ME" and then compare those samples.

They didn't have that hear at all -- the "experts" say "Sure, we'd like to have that, but in a pinch, we can just guestimate."

Rocket Science

Contrary to popular belief, even rocket science is not rocket science.

posted by Ace at 01:31 PM

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