Arkansas Times ^ | April 25, 2012 | Gene Lyons
I was also leery of journalists and TV personalities like Al Sharpton and his MSNBC colleagues setting up as prosecutor, judge and jury. Even if you didn't know about Sharpton's previous misadventures — he became famous due to his outrageous conduct during the 1987 Tawana Brawley rape hoax — the network's permitting him to report about a public event in which he'd enrolled as an active participant violated every known rule of journalistic ethics.
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A festival of bad reporting, speculation and mind-reading from the outset, the Zimmerman-Martin affair has turned into a classic example of what University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls a "consensual hallucination."
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Needless to say, no corrections were forthcoming. Instead fresh outrage was manufactured over murky video footage of Zimmerman being led into police headquarters in handcuffs, seemingly unmarked after being treated by EMS technicians.... Not only the Rev. Sharpton, but Big Ed, Lawrence O'Donnell and their guests repeatedly portrayed it as the linchpin of their case. Zimmerman had clearly lied about Trayvon assaulting him. Therefore there was no self-defense. Case closed.
So when ABC News published a contemporaneous photo of Zimmerman with blood streaming from two wounds on the back of his head on the day of his bail hearing, a naïve observer might have imagined that an attitude adjustment might be in order. No chance. Sharpton ignored the photos altogether; the rest gave them short shrift
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