Trayvon Martin story found the media
By _Paul Farhi_
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/paul-farhi/2011/03/08/ABO2YCP_page.html) ,
Published: April 12, 2012
The Washington Post
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It began as a routine police-blotter item, a journalistic afterthought. On
Feb. 26, the _Orlando Sentinel’s online edition _
(http://www.orlandosentinel.com/) devoted a few dozen words to the fatal
shooting of an unnamed
teenager in the nearby town of Sanford. The story also made the late news that
night on _WOFL, the local Fox affiliate_ (http://www.myfoxorlando.com/) .
The Sentinel followed a day later with another brief item, this one noting
the young victim’s name and age: Trayvon Martin, 17. The paper said it wasn’
t identifying the shooter, a man in his 20s, “because he has not been
charged.” The early police accounts of the episode made it seem nothing more
than “a fight gone bad,” recalled John Cutter, the Sentinel’s associate
editor.
And then . . . nothing.
The national media didn’t descend on Sanford. Celebrities didn’t tweet
about the shooting. The cable pundits didn’t start their debate about guns,
race and _Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law_
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/stand-your-ground-laws-coincide-with-jump-in-justifiable-homicide-ca
ses/2012/04/07/gIQAS2v51S_story.html) . For more than a week, the story
teetered near obscurity, at risk of becoming just another tragic but
forgotten encounter on a rainy night in central Florida.
It’s likely that Martin’s death, which resulted in the arrest and
indictment Wednesday of confessed shooter George Zimmerman, would never have
crowded into the national consciousness had it not been for Martin’s family,
its
lawyers and an enterprising PR man.
For the most part, the Martin story found the media, rather than vice
versa. Outraged by the lack of an arrest, the Martin camp lobbied news outlets
to examine what had happened that night in Sanford. Eventually, the media
did, and the story moved like a fast-burning fuse, leaping from traditional
news sources to the blogosphere and social media.
A pivotal, if little-known, figure in the Martin story’s development was
_Ryan Julison_ (http://julisoncom.com/we_are.html) , an Orlando public
relations executive who began working with the Martin family at the behest of
its
attorneys, Benjamin Crump and Natalie Jackson.
With the story fading, Julison began trying to revive interest in it,
emphasizing a storyline of an unarmed teenager, a neighborhood watchman with a
gun and the lack of an arrest. He got few takers.
“There just wasn’t a lot of interest in this out of the gate,” he said in
an interview Thursday. “Oftentimes, it seems like the media likes to follow
instead of going first. They want to wait and see someone else do the
story and then they get in line. But we were at zero. We had to keep going
from
scratch.”
Julison, who has worked on other high-profile stories, such as acting as
spokesman for _John Travolta after the death of his son, Jett_
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/02/jett-travolta-dies-son-of_n_154877.html)
,
finally found two takers: the Reuters wire service and CBS News.
Reuters moved a 14-paragraph story on the case March 7. The next morning, _
“CBS This Morning”_ (http://www.cbsnews.com/cbsthismorning/) aired a
piece by reporter Mark Strassman in which Trayvon’s father, Tracy, expressed
his grief over his son’s death and outrage that Zimmerman was still free —
two elements that would stoke the coverage for weeks.
“It was one of those stories that, when you hear the pitch, you just say, ‘
Wow, this has to be told,’ ” said Chris Licht, executive producer of the
morning program. From the reaction afterward, he said, “We knew we’d hit on
something significant.”
All at once, the two national media reports seemed to give the incident
the attention and credibility Martin’s family had been seeking.
That morning, Julison organized a news conference in Jackson’s law office
in Orlando, featuring Crump and Tracy Martin. The news conference generated
more local coverage, an Associated Press story and a piece in the
Huffington Post. Two days later, on March 10, ABC’s “Good Morning, America”
weighed in.
The fuse, now burning brightly, soon threatened to touch off an explosion.
Members of the New Black Panther Party, a fringe group, showed up in
Sanford that weekend to protest Zimmerman’s release from police custody. By
Monday, the Rev. Al Sharpton was talking about the Martin case on his
syndicated
radio program and on his MSNBC show, setting off even more talk on cable.
On cable talk shows, “hosts on both sides of the political spectrum found
something that fit their perspectives,” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the
Project for Excellence in Journalism, which had studied the media
coverage.
The left seized on the police not charging Zimmerman and on the Martin
family as symbols of civil rights, he said; the right emphasized alleged
liberal media bias in reporting the story. According to PEJ’s data, MSNBC,
which
employs Sharpton, has discussed the Martin case more than CNN or Fox News.
A key twist in the story, said Julison, was the release on March 16 of
tapes of Zimmerman’s 911 emergency calls. The tapes, which Sanford police had
resisted releasing, gave news outlets fresh material to report, and added
another emotional element to the story. One recording captured screams for
help in the background. “It humanized the situation,” he said. “You hear
people crying. You can’t help but be moved by it.”
By this time, the story had spread to social media, with such celebrities
as Spike Lee, Russell Simmons and Mia Farrow tweeting their outrage, and
LeBron James and his Miami Heat teammates posing for photos in hoodies — the
garment worn by Martin at the time of his death.
The Martin family, in New York for an appearance on “The Today Show,” also
agreed to participate in a local rally dubbed “The Million Hoodie March,”
which drew enormous media attention. President Obama finally seemed to
certify the story’s national significance March 23 when he commented, “If I
had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”
Julison, who worked on the story for no compensation, says he always
thought his clients’ case had merit, but the outcome wasn’t guaranteed. “All
of
these things worked perfectly,” he said. “They came out in just the right
sequence for us.”
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