News stations, newspapers, the internet, radio, and even entertainment shows "news" segments cover a wide a ray of topics but a particularly controversial topic they cover is murder trials.
From Casey Anthony to George Zimmerman and now Michael Dunn, the news media has followed these cases not only letting the public view every part of the trial but letting the public become invested in it by promoting conversations and debates about them.
I do not personally think this is a bad thing, letting people be involved in what is going on in the world. The only concern I have is the manner in which these trials are covered.
Because news is shared so easily today I fear that such intense coverage on matters of this nature do more harm than good.
There are many questions we have to ask about how these trials are covered:
1. Are they covered with politically motivated coverage?
2. Are they giving these murders a sense/reality of fame?
3. Is the coverage doing the public a service of information or an unnecessary instigation of violence and backlash?
When watching coverage about these sad and at sometimes devastating incidents, I encourage everyone to watch with intent. I personally do not like to mindlessly watch these as entertainment which I am afraid some people do. I watch to learn and at the point I do not feel I am learning anything I turn it off.
I could not agree more. I think media coverage of incidents like the trials you mentioned should state the facts and leave it at that. Instead they insist on repeating the same things over and over again and putting their own twists of bias on the information. I think this kind of coverage is partially to blame for the crime that ensued after the Zimmerman trial. Instead of bringing us closer to equality, I think the media pushed us a few steps back by focusing so much on race.
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