As the nation continues to deal with the tragic and unnecessary killing of a young African-American teenager at the hands of a self-appointed neighborhood watch captain, we must also question the handling of this story by the media and how it relates to, if it does at all, with race relations in America. Before tackling that for any reader not already aware of the situation currently unfolding in Sanford, Florida George Zimmerman, the self-appointed head of neighborhood watch, on February 26 Zimmerman followed Trayvon Martin, a seventeen-year-old African American. Zimmerman believed Martin was armed and was a threat to the security of the neighborhood so he followed and proceeded to interrogate him, which led to supposed altercation that left Martin dead as a result of a gunshot. Police arrived on the scene and it was discovered that Martin had on his person a bottle of iced tea and a bag of skittles. Not surprisingly outrage and criticisms have poured in from all across the nation, from popular liberal activist Reverend Al Sharpton to even the Occupy movement, the brunt of the anger and critiques have been directed at the Sanford Police Department in its handling of the situation, specifically that Zimmerman has yet to be arrested. Zimmerman claims he was justified in his actions by Florida’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ law, a law that allows individuals to use aggressive force when confronted by an assailant without having to attempt retreat first.

As the legal, social, and political battles surrounding this tragic occurrence unfold one part of this story that is most interesting is just how late most of the major news media outlets are to the party. It has been almost three weeks since this story first broke out, I first read it on Yahoo.com, yet CNN, Fox News, the New York Times, and others have really only spent adequate time on this story this week. It seems odd that in this world of immediate twenty-four hour non-stop news that it would take about two weeks for a story of this volatile nature to become major national news. It seems that the media has handled this situation much in the same way as the Sanford Police Department. The main question we must ask is there a racist component to this lack of interest, to which I would answer no there is not. While it may seem strange I do not believe there was any lack of caring for the life of Trayvon Martin just because the story was ignored for two weeks, just merely a lack of journalistic interest, which is unfortunately an entirely different subject. Certainly though there are many who would disagree with my assumption. Just yesterday on my way too school I was doing what I usually do, which is listen to the radio, I was listening to the Bert Show on Q100, and there were discussing the story. When they proceeded to take calls the first caller criticized the Bert Show for only addressing this story on Thursday when it has been a major since Monday (of course we know that it occurred much earlier than that). The caller then said that the show was hypocritical in claiming that they claim to cater to a diverse audience, yet seems to show little interest in this case. Jen Hobby, who usually does the show’s brief news segments, took immediate offense to that, first correcting the caller that they had mentioned the story everyday that week though admittedly only for a short amount of time, she then began to become emotional believing that the caller had accused her of being racist. Ms. Hobby the proceeded to claim that being called a racist was ‘one of the worst things she could be called’. Looking at this we must ask ourselves what is racist, what is not. Shooting an unarmed teenager simply because he was a young, African American definitely has a racial element to it, a morning radio-talk show talking about the story briefly is not.

You can find the story on the New York Times here.