An Eye for an I

I got hit with a question from a friend on FB regarding George Zimmerman and the Trayvon Martin Case. I had to step back for a moment and ask myself am I really for justice or have I been sucker punched by media to ride a horse of justice named vengeance, running dead last. I guess I now know where the philosophical part of the Ph.D. Comes from. I urge all invested in this case to step back and ask are you defusing this situation or putting out the fire with 93 octane. From an analytical standpoint it's an exercise in media framing.  This story, like the Duke Lacrosse story has so many twists and turns.  What puzzles me is how this news case, like others, operates as a vehicle for market driven media to capture audiences. It's carnival in a media sense were corporate elites are profiting from tragedy in the middle class as opposed to media operating as an agent to defuse an already chaotic situation.  In the watchdog sense, I think practitioners take that role too far to where media operates capriciously as its own judiciary. The civic responsible model of media suggests that news media do the best it can for the public good.  In my most educated opinion, market driven media, in this case has strayed away from that, and through a humanistic lens, we are potentially running the risk of two lives being lost to an already egregious tragic situation.  The best thing news media can do in this episode is step back, return to responsible reporting and allow for law enforcement to do, what in my most sincere voice, failed to do in the initial phase of this incident: conduct a complete transparent investigation.  Otherwise, news media may have to explain the extended coverage in the face of a Zimmerman suicide.