Media using race to sell George Zimmerman case

The outrage isn’t subsiding as protests continue from many who vehemently disagree with the not-guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman murder trial. And the Monday morning quarterbacking continues as the media try to milk it for all they can.

“I was stunned. I thought that since the verdict occurred on Saturday, the media might start to move on,” says KTTH host David Boze about the seemingly non-stop coverage still going strong Monday afternoon.

Photos: Zimmerman verdict sparks protests in Seattle and around the country

“There’s tremendous disappointment that no major cities burned down on Saturday night or Sunday night protests,” says KTTH and nationally syndicated host Michael Medved. “Now that there aren’t major riots, they have to justify their obsessive coverage of this thing.”

While there have been demonstrations nationwide, including in Seattle, they’ve so far remained non-violent. But there’s been plenty of talk of violence across the Internet from many who argue Zimmerman’s exoneration is tacit approval to shoot young, unarmed black men.

But Medved and Boze argue the case was only about race because of political pressure and media attention.

“Was it not obvious to everybody that there was only political pressure that led to George Zimmerman being charged with murder?” Medved asks. “Had there been a white guy who was killed by George Zimmerman under the same circumstances, they never would have brought the case and there would have been no public outcry.”

Medved calls out the mainstream media, especially the 24-hour cable networks, for their “profound hypocrisy” in obsessively covering the story while ignoring many others.

“They don’t care about the literally hundreds and hundreds of black, young men like Trayvon Martin, who were killed this week. And they only care about this one because they can make something racial and political about it.”

Boze agrees, arguing there is a much deeper issue that isn’t being discussed.

“It’s not whites or Hispanics that are going after African-American men … It’s what happened in Chicago over the weekend that illustrates a much greater problem.”

Boze and Medved point to recent statistics showing the Trayvon Martin shooting underscores how atypical the Zimmerman case really was and what they argue is the real problem – over half of all murder victims in America are black. Ninety-three percent are killed by other blacks. Only 7 percent are killed by Latinos and whites.

“Black people are the chief victims of crime and also unfortunately, the chief perpetrators of crime. It’s unfortunate, in both cases and until people address that problem very seriously, what we’re going to have is the stupid frustration,” Medved says.

Clearly, there’s plenty of disagreement about the verdict and the message it sends. In his sermon Sunday at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Seattle, Rev. Aaron Williams argued against the verdict.

“If the role had been reversed and Trayvon was the one with the gun and Zimmerman had been shot and killed, this trial would have ended quite differently,” he said.

But Medved says the facts of the case clearly showed otherwise. He argues if Martin had been white, charges would have never been brought against Zimmerman and the case would have never gone to trial.

“The notion that this was somehow a willful murder, that George Zimmerman got out of his car and said ‘I want to go shoot down some black person’ is preposterous,” says Medved.