Trayvon
Martin story found the media
By Paul Farhi, Published: April 12,
2012
The
Washington Post
It began as a
routine police-blotter item, a journalistic
afterthought. On Feb. 26, the Orlando
Sentinel’s online edition 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.
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. 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, 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.â€
Julison, who has worked on other high-profile
stories, such as acting as spokesman for John
Travolta after the death of his son, Jett,
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†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.â€
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,â€
he said. “You hear people crying. You can’t help
but be moved by it.â€
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,â€
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.â€
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.â€
