Bad Journalist.

I only received one piece of fan mail today. But I thought it worth sharing, since it’s exemplary.

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Subject: i’d expect nothing less

Dear Weinstein:

Do you give this much coverage to the random attacks on white people all across the country at the hands of blacks and browns?  Did you ever stop and think that maybe George Zimmerman did act in self defense?  I wasn’t there the night of the George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin incident that led to Trayvon’s death, and neither were you.  I’m not sure why you make it a point to write personal attacks against George Zimmerman in your articles, when  you don’t know for sure what happened that night.  Young black males TERRORIZE every town and city in America that has a substantial black population, yet you dedicate weeks on one trial because the alleged victim is black.  Who’s really the racist?  I’d expect nothing less from a member of your tribe, after all, didn’t you guys trade Jesus for a bag of nickels?

Brian J. Riece Jr.

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Why do I do what I do? Not for riches or fame, God knows.

I just want people who think like “Brian J. Riece Jr.” to be flushed out into the open. If they can’t stop being racist fools, than maybe at least they can be made to feel that their place in culture is marginal, radical — that the future is not theirs, that nobody in the marketplace of ideas will buy the putrescence that they’re selling, and that there are costs to being hateful boors.

That’s my hope, anyway. Maybe I’m wrong. Will we let them have the future?

SUBJECT:

your gawker article

TEXT:

…is a complete and total joke.  Your Columbia University education obviously didn’t teach you that in America a defendant is innocent until proven guilty.  You wouldn’t know journalism if it smacked you in the face…this was a blatant partisan left wing smear, full of falsehoods and grounds for a lawsuit.

Let’s discuss a few facts - concrete, undeniable facts.  Trayvon Martin had THC in his system while in the confrontation with Zimmerman, numerous texts discussed his propensity for fighting and starting fights, getting suspended from school, and making inquiries about illegally acquiring a gun.  He then in a phone conversation with a friend called Zimmerman a “crazy ass cracker”  - a ignorant, racist term for a white person.

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Dear Adam,

I added the fact that I never email writers in the subject in the hopes that you understand how much your article moved me.  But probably not in the way that you think.

I am absolutely filled with sorrow that you put Trayvon’s murdered body on a big website the way you did, and for the REASONS you did.  Please don’t get me wrong.  I’m glad you’d like to incite anger.  As a Black woman, I am angry. livid. distraught.  BUT, you should have asked permission from Trayvon’s parents.  They should have had that right.  Trayvon and his parents had no respect/hand in how he was portrayed in the mind of his ignorant murderer.  That decision cost him his life.  He was killed because Zimmerman saw him as a dangerous Black body.  He was not human.  Not a person with a family.

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This morning, I posted a postmortem police photograph of the Miami teen. It is, unfortunately, difficult to avoid on the webpage where it’s posted. Opinion seems divided — and virulent — on whether its publication is clickbait (not my intention) or a critical part of the narrative around his life and death (my view).

But to me, that debate is part of the point. And it’s a debate that is not possible unless the image is accessible. 

Consider an interesting inversion: So often in American culture, we marvel how trial juries are not privy to information that we, as news consumers, can access about the issue at hand. In this case, the photograph was evidence, entered into jury consideration… and today’s debate centers on whether we, as news consumers, should be privy to the same information that is under consideration by this Seminole County jury, which deliberates in the name of The People of Florida.

We were not meant to see this, of course. A decision was made — in part by the court, in part by the simulcasting networks, in part by us — that some of the jury’s information is not for public consumption.

That puts immense pressure on a video shooter someplace in the courtroom, following the action, and in a split second, he makes a judgment error.

People come up short all the time, after all. Occasionally with cameras, occasionally with double-action 9-millimeter pistols.