It turns out that not everyone in the journalism business was down with the way the media presented the Zimmerman trial.

Randy Hall of News Busters reports.

Former Top Journalism Professor Blasts Media for Zimmerman Coverage

One of the most important things a journalist is supposed to do is check, double check, and sometimes even triple check sources to make sure the news being reported is accurate.

That’s not what happened in the case involving George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, according to Rem Rieder, a former journalism professor and a media columnist for USA Today. Instead, the members of the news media portrayed Zimmerman as “the neighborhood watch captain/’wannabe cop’” who profiled Martin, “an unarmed, hoodie-clad black teenager” out on the streets “simply because he wanted some Skittles.”

“The storyline quickly took root,” Rieder noted, “amplified by the nearly ubiquitous images of the two: a sweet-looking photo of a several-years-younger Trayvon released by his family, and a mug shot of Zimmerman from a previous arrest in which he looks puffy and downcast.”

The contrasting images powerfully reinforced the images of the menacing bully and the innocent victim.

While putting forth this narrative, the media made major mistakes, including when NBC News edited Zimmerman’s comments during a phone call to inaccurately suggest that he volunteered that Trayvon seemed suspicious because he was black. In fact, Zimmerman was responding to a question when he mentioned the teenager’s race. The network apologized for the error.

“When it emerged that Zimmerman’s mother was Peruvian, some news outlets took to referring to him with the rarely used phrase ‘white Hispanic,’ which is kind of like calling President Obama ‘white black,’” the columnist stated.