Make it more of a story (or as you said, to manipulate people's emotions)
I saw tons of coverage and read many articles about Rodney King before the trial, and never once did they mention that there were black cops, hispanic cops, and female cops present at the beating. They made it out to be a bunch of white male cops beating a black male suspect. I don't think they were hoping for riots, I think they were sensationalizing, for ratings not riots. It wasn't until after the trial that I read there were black and hispanic cops present, and not until the second trial that there were female cops present.
As far as this story goes, one motivation for defending Zimmerman was that he was a 28 year old community college student being pronounced guilty by members of Congress a year before the trial. I'm having a hard time seeing him as the privileged one in that situation. Then there's the coverage, in particular NBC editing the 911 call to make him sound racist. You could make a list of possible motivations, one being ratings, but I don't think they're such rating whores that they'd actually try to start riots.
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Date: 18/7/13 02:11 (UTC)I saw tons of coverage and read many articles about Rodney King before the trial, and never once did they mention that there were black cops, hispanic cops, and female cops present at the beating. They made it out to be a bunch of white male cops beating a black male suspect. I don't think they were hoping for riots, I think they were sensationalizing, for ratings not riots. It wasn't until after the trial that I read there were black and hispanic cops present, and not until the second trial that there were female cops present.
As far as this story goes, one motivation for defending Zimmerman was that he was a 28 year old community college student being pronounced guilty by members of Congress a year before the trial. I'm having a hard time seeing him as the privileged one in that situation. Then there's the coverage, in particular NBC editing the 911 call to make him sound racist. You could make a list of possible motivations, one being ratings, but I don't think they're such rating whores that they'd actually try to start riots.