Can They Ever Be Trusted Again? 

Why Did ABC News Decide To Publicly Out

The Name Of A 13-Year-Old Witness of The 

TrayVon Martin Shooting? 

Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit and others noticed on March 29th that on March 26th, ABC News published an article that revealed the name of a 13 year old minor who had given eyewitness testimony to police in the TrayVon Martin case: 

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/03/disgusting-abc-outs-13-year-old-witness-to-trayvon-martin-killing/

Today that article still shows the name of the 13 year old eyewitness:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/trayvon-martin-shooter-teenager-gun/story?id=16000239#.T4AjJftSTK1

Here's what that page shows now: 

Outing the name of an eyewitness to something like this while the investigation is still ongoing is a big deal.  It's an even bigger deal when the witness in question is a 13 year old minor.  

Let us remember that the name of TrayVon Martin's 16 year old girlfriend with whom he was speaking on his cell phone at the time of the shooting is still confidential because she has asked that her name not be made public.  

Why did ABC News protect the privacy of a 16 year old witness but then turn around and publicly out  a 13 year old witness?  

I find it hard to believe that this minor's family/legal guardians told ABC News it was fine for them to publicly reveal their son's name.  This family lives at Ground Zero of all the hysteria and inflammatory behavior we've been watching for the past 2 weeks, with celebrities tweeting addresses and racist groups offering bounties.  

After her son was publicly outed by Gutman and Tienabeso to public scrutiny and pressure, his mother went on TV specifically to repudiate and call into question the validity of her son's eyewitness testimony to police.  

On the 29th when I was researching this, and again on the 30th, the 31st, the 1st and the 2nd, pictures of the witnesses' mother during her TV appearance were in abundance on both Google and Bing.  I was trying to find pictures to use in an article.  

That has all now been memory holed.  

Today, you cannot find ANY pictures of the mother's TV appearance on Google or Bing if you specifically search for the boy or his mother by name.  

Here's what an image search of Google for '[name of the 13 year old] TrayVon Martin Mom' shows you today: 

Google Image Search

Bing image search: 

Bing Image Search

The search links? If you specifically type the witnesses name into the search engine, for 1-2 entries still up about her TV appearance, they now take you to other stories.  

Google Web Search

Clicking on the link  for the NY Daily News article now redirects you to a page that shows an article about the Sanford police video.  The 13 year old witness and his mom are never mentioned in the article.  

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-03-29/news/31256476_1_police-video-police-station-footage

The only news article I could find if you specifically searched with the boy's name and his mom's name that doesn't redirect you a different story is this one from Fox News: 

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/03/29/trayvon-martin-witness-casts-doubt-on-shooters-self-defense-claims/

If you decide to leave the real names OUT of your search however, and just searched for '13 Year Old Witness TrayVon Martin Mom TV' you DO find a few stories still up - and some do have pictures: 

Google Web Search Specifically Leaving Out The Names

Bing Web Search Specifically Leaving Out The Names

Image searches are still tricky though:

Bing has NONE: 

Bing Image Search Without Names

Google has several still up: 

Google Image Search Without Names

3 of the first 4 returns are from the TV interview. Out of respect for the family's privacy, I have removed all instances of their names that appeared in earlier versions of this article and have left this screenshot intentionally small.  

So what are we to make of this?  ABC News outs the name of the witness, his mother rushes onto TV to call his testimony into question, and then within a week the vast majority of the news stories and pics that were  up just a few days ago have been scrubbed from the 'net.  

Make no mistake what happened here:  instead of neutrally and objectively reporting the news, Matt Gutman, Seni Tienabeso and others at ABC News decided to INFLUENCE the story by deliberately outing the name of a witness so that public pressure could be brought to bear on this family.  

Once that public pressure had accomplished what was intended, the shield of confidentiality seems to have been quickly put back in place.  

Witness confidentiality in speaking to media is a bedrock principle of journalism.  In sensitive, controversial cases, you can only get people to talk to you by promising them anonymity.  

Anonymity in a case like this is crucial because it shelters people from exactly the kind of public pressure and abuse that might cause them not come forward in the first place.  

If you put a wall back up after having taken it down, aren't you really admitting you never should have taken that wall down in the first place?  

Who will EVER trust these reporters and ABC News now? 

This minor eyewitness and his family deserved better than this from ABC News.  If no permission to use his name was granted, somebody at ABC News needs to be held accountable for this journalistic malpractice.  

UPDATE: I have tweeted ABC News reporter Matt Gutman in an attempt to clarify if he ever got permission from this minor's family or legal guardians to use his name in public.  

UPDATE II: After getting some feedback on Twitter, I have decided to scrub the name of the minor and his mother from the article.  I can still show what happened without compromising their privacy like ABC News did.  After first thinking there was no reason not to mention the names because ABC News had already done the damage and the mother had already appeared on TV, I considered that if much of the internet had made the decision to give them back their privacy, I had better also. 

This doesn't excuse what Gutman and Tienabeso did, however so I am still going to pursue this and attempt to discover if these reporters ever received permission to go public with the witnesses identity. 

UPDATE III: As far was what the minor's mother had to say in her TV interview, we need to remember what police procedure is when questioning eyewitnesses, especially minors.  A parent or legal guardian must be present.  Many police departments video tape or at least audiotape witness interviews.  Witnesses are asked to sign a summary of their statement.  In the future, if this goes to a trial, we'll likely get to see if there are any marked differences between what the minor told police in his official eyewitness statement and how his mother characterized that statement when she went public.  

UPDATE IV: ABC News reporter Matt Gutmann has gotten back to me on Twitter: 

https://twitter.com/#!/mattgutmanABC/status/189503131200126977

Does saying the interview was 'on the record' and 'on cam' and done 'twice' = 'permission to publicly reveal 13 year old minor's identity?  I'm not sure so I'm asking Matt to specifically say "Yes, the family gave me permission to use the name of their minor son." 

Let's Count How Many Media Versions of The Same Picture Now Exist:

The original, unaltered picture: 

Now meet 'White[r] Hispanic' George Zimmerman:

1

2

3

4

Here's 4 I found showing different shades of skin tone and backgrounds. 

One of the big changes is to alter the background to light green or cool blue to accentuate the white highlights in Zimmerman's face.  The darker background of the original pic didn't do that.  

In the digital age, there is no excuse for this.  This isn't the 1980's where you had to run a scan through a copier at Kinko's to make copies of a picture.  The only reason to change the skin tone like this is to make Zimmerman look 'whiter'.  Not a single alteration made him look darker.  

If you can find more, please post links in the comments.  

10 'Facts' About The TrayVon Martin 

Shooting That Turned Out To Be Wrong

Here's the scorecard thus far:

1. White man Zimmerman jumped out of his car and confronted Martin and then shot him in cold blood.

Wrong. Whatever happened, there was a fight and Zimmerman ended up on his back with Martin on top of him. Martin was shot during a fight. Despite the 'white hispanic' hijinks we've seen we all know the only reason he's being called that is to keep the racism narrative on life support.

2. The idea that a small child like TrayVon would start a fight with a much bigger, 250 pound man that outweighed him by 100 pounds is ridiculous.

Wrong. Despite deliberately trying to create a public perception of Martin as a small child, he was actually over 6 feet tall and around 160 pounds, not that far off from Zimmerman, who is actually 5 foot 9 and 170 or 180 pounds, depending on who you listen to. The media reported Zimmerman's weight at 240 from an arrest back in 2005.

3. The police did no serious investigation - why they didn't even put up any yellow tape around the scene of the shooting!

Wrong. Jesse Jackson's claimed this in the media several times. It's not true.

4. Zimmerman's gun was never taken from him, or if it was it was quickly returned to him that same night.

Wrong. Who was claiming this? I've only seen it on this board. Who in the media ever claimed Zimmerman got that gun back right away? As it turns out it was entered into evidence that night and there it remains.

5. Zimmerman muttered '****ing coons' under his breath into his cell phone, proving that racism motivated this shooting.

Wrong. When your only proof of racism is something some guy is mumbling under his breath and you have to bring in audio experts to clean up the background noise and sharpen the sound and half the people that listen to it hear 'punks' not 'coons' you need something stronger than that. 

CNN's audio expert who first helped get this particular bit of misinformation going is now backtracking away from it: 

That's 5 things people 'knew' to be indisputably true when certain people decided to take this story national in order to push their 'America is racist' agenda. Since then? Let's go over the 5 examples thus far of media malfeasance in this case:

6. MSNBC and NBC News deceptively edit Zimmerman's 911 call to make it as racially inflammatory as possible. Caught red-handed, NBC launches an investigation of itself, concludes it made a 'mistake' and apologizes.

7. ABC News outs the name of a 13 year old minor at the scene. While scrupulously protecting the names of other witnesses who don't want to be identified - including that of Martin's 16 year old girlfriend on the phone with him at the time of the shooting - for some reason ABC News decided to publicly out the minor's name. Within days of her son being outed to public scrutiny and pressure, his mother begins appearing in the media specifically to cast doubt on his eyewitness testimony to police investigators.

8. ABC News shows the public a grainy, low resolution videotape of Zimmerman's arrival at the Sanford PD the night of the shooting. It uses this tape to claim Zimmerman is not bleeding and has no injuries that can be seen, and says this casts doubt on Zimmerman's story of a fight with Martin in which he suffered injuries. This implies there was no fight and Zimmerman did indeed cold bloodedly execute Martin. Other media outlets such as MSNBC quickly adopt the same claim. To counter this misinformation being pushed by the media, the Sanford PD is forced to issue a much higher resolution of the video to demonstrate Zimmerman did have a big bloody gash on the back of his head. ABC News, MSNBC and others are forced to quickly issue retractions.

9. A Florida newspaper brings in two audio experts who claim they can 'prove' it's not Zimmerman heard screaming for help on a 911 audiotape. Tom Owen claims he can only match the voice heard yelling for help to Zimmerman with 48% certainty. He says he would need a 90% match or better to scientifically prove that is Zimmerman yelling on the tape.  Ed Primeau claims he's '95% sure' it's not Zimmerman yelling for help on the tape. 

Confused, many people take Owens' & Primeau's words to mean they have 'proven' it's NOT Zimmerman calling out. It's also pointed out later that on their own websites they say to get a scientific match, they need a voice sample from the subject saying the same words in the same way - so they'd need to have George Zimmerman scream 'HELP ME!' into a microphone and then compare that to the screams on the 911 call. Without such a sample, they are in effect comparing Zimmerman speaking in a normal, calm voice with a voice screaming quite emotionally on another tape. In other words - they're guessing.

10. Several news outlets claimed Zimmerman fired more than 1 shot. In fact, Sanford PD took a gun with a full clip off of Zimmerman, meaning the one shot that was discharged was the one that was in the pipe.

Instead of waiting for all the facts to come out, a very bad, very inaccurate story was framed on first impressions to inflame a racial narrative, which some people were only too happy to use to turn this into a national story to further their agenda by politicizing this young man's tragic death.

And they've spent the past 3 weeks screaming like a banshee at anybody who points out the actual facts as they emerge.


UPDATE: Realizing nobody was buying their 'this was just an innocent mistake' BS defense, NBC News has now fired the senior producer who was behind the 911 audio tape edit....but WITHOUT giving his name.  So he could just move on to another job tomorrow? 


http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/04/06/nbc-fires-producer-of-misleading-zimmerman-segment

UPDATE: I have edited this article by deciding to remove the name of the 13 year old minor. 

Fact-Checking Fun:

Keith Olbermann Broadcasting Empire, Inc.

vs

Current TV

Fact checking just the first 3 pages of Olberboy's lawsuit on twitter: 


http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/sites/default/files/custom/Festival_Dailies/OBE%20v%20%20Current%20TV%20Watermark.pdf


@drawandstrike 


#1: The lawsuit states twice on the first page that Olbermann was 'courted' and 'enticed' to leave his job as MSNBC to work for Current TV. 


As all of us who have followed the soap opera that is Olbermann's life know quite well, he was FIRED from his job at MSNBC. He didn't voluntarily leave it to work for another network. 


http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/keith-olbermann-fired-from-msnbc/


In a way, I can understand why Keith Olbermann would misrepresent the facts in his lawsuit against Current TV. Saying "I was enticed and courted away from my safe secure job at one network to work for another network" sounds SO MUCH BETTER than saying "I had just gotten my ass fired from MSNBC for being an insufferable prick and I was unemployed so I was happy to take the Current TV job."


#2 A contract with an employer is not lifetime tenure. Amazingly enough, Keith apparently still thinks it is because he's claiming Current breached his employment contract by firing him. 


#3 Keith claims the seriousness of Current breaching his contract by firing him was compounded because they did so 'publicly'. 


#4. Under point 2 of the lawsuit, Olbermann claims Current TV 'courted' him to leave his MSNBC job. 


#5 Keith states after being brought in to be the star of the new network and it's highest paid employee, he was shocked to learn his bosses actually wanted to spend time with him discussing things. This struck Keith as an extreme breach of protocol because it was an obvious attempt to 'isolate' him from his representatives, who are supposed to deal with his bosses for him. Because Keith wouldn't deal with his bosses, he claims he was 'punished'.


#6 The lawsuit discusses how upset Keith was that David Bohrman was hired to run the network because he, according to Olbermann, is a man 'without relative experience' when it comes to network news. 


Here's David Bohrman's wiki page. Look how many network news shows he's done: 


http://tinyurl.com/boj8npc 


This is the guy who's hiring Keith is claiming was a breach of contract. 


#7 In point #4 of the lawsuit, Keith hilariously begins claiming that bad DVR programming and the absence of Keith's program from cable lineups limited viewers ability to tune in, so it was Current's fault his ratings were so low. Breach of contract! 


#8 Lots of complaints about how substandard the studio set was without mention of the fact Keith designed it himself and it cost $250,000. After Keith decided he really didn't like his self-designed set, he demanded Current fork over $$$ for improvements, and when he didn't get as much as he wanted, all of a sudden the badly designed substandard set became all Current TV's fault. 


#9 Olbermann claims...........sit down for this one....that Current TV is breach of contract because they broadcast ads for Keith's program and the Current Network using Keith's likeness....and KEITH NEVER GAVE THEM PERMISSION TO DO THAT. 


I am NOT making that up. It's right there, page 3, point #6: (1) broadcasting advertisements containing Olbermann's likeness without his consent.... 


#10 Keith claims he never gave his approval or permission of the guest hosts Current TV used when he wasn't there to host the program himself. 


I stopped on page 3. I couldn't go any further because I am laughing so hard. 

It's Over For Gregg Williams;

New Tape Surfaces In Which He 

Encourages His Defense To 

Deliberately Injure Specific Players 

On The 49ers

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/04/05/before-final-game-gregg-williams-urged-saints-to-injure-49ers/


Graphic language warning on the video below:

That's pretty much standard boilerplate 'get out thar n' hit'em haaard!!!' coach talk UNTIL Williams talks about deliberately hitting 49ers QB Alex Smith in the head.  


Then Williams reminds his defense about making sure they take cheap shots to the head before getting off the pile. 


He then talks about hitting Crabtree on the outside ACL, which can only mean he's telling his players to deliberately hit Crabtree on the knee.  


That's followed by a comment about trying to make sure they put Vernon Davis' ankles 'over the pile' - which means inside a pile up of players where they can try to grab his foot and twist it or drop a knee on his ankle where the ref's can't see it.  


Telling your players to target specific players on another team for shots to the head, knee and ankle is not just crossing the line, it's obliterating it.  I don't see any way Williams can ever coach again in the NFL after this.  

Video Game Review:

Halo: Reach  

Remember the fateful moments that started a legend.  Remember the courage and sacrifice in the face of overwhelming odds. 

Remember the ones who gave us a chance.

Remember Reach.

Humanity's desperate final fight begins here.  You are Noble Six, the newest member of an elite team of crack Spartan super soldiers called Noble Team, tasked with defending the planet of Reach from a Covenant invasion, and with getting the last spark of hope out of the enemies hands before the fateful end.  

Bungie deserved all the accolades it got for this game.  The development of the Halo universe since the initial game launched in Nov. 2001 has been fantastic.  Taking the story back to the very beginning, before the 'hushed casket' was opened on the Pillar of Autumn after it fled the fall of Reach was a stroke of genius.  

It was a risk making a game based on a story where all of the franchise's fans know it doesn't have a happy ending, but Bungie carries it off beautifully, even poignantly.  And they didn't exactly hide where the story was going either, as the very first scene in the game is that of a Spartan helmet lying abandoned on a ravaged planet with a bullet hole in the visor.

We come to sense even before the campaign is 1/3rd over that Reach is doomed.  What's more, we can see the Spartan team knows it too, but they press on, and in the end it's their sacrifices that lays the foundation for events that will propel humanity to victory.  

You're welcome. 

It's apparent Bungie took all of the critcism of their fan community regarding Halo:ODST very seriously.  They have attempted to address all of the issues in this new installment, and some of the attempts were more successful than others.  

One of the chief criticisms was that the protagonist of ODST was a nameless, faceless, colorless robot with no real personality.  A team was introduced in ODST, but you didn't really get a sense of any of them as persons.  Bungie has addressed this in Reach, although they probably didn't go as far as some of the critics might have liked.  Each member of Noble Team has defined roles and personalties that come through.  We get to see their faces - except for Emile, who never takes that creepy helmet of his off, the one with the skull face drawn on it. 

Jorge is the uber-large chain-gun carrying point man with a sensitive heart. 

Jun is the strong silent sniper/scout that goes about his job with quiet competency.

Kat is the electronics wizard/demolitions expert with a mechanical arm you might not notice until halfway into the game.

Emile is the aforementioned badass with a skull painted on his helmet who specializes in up close combat.  He never takes his  helmet off and nobody ever asks him too, either. 

Carter is the team leader, a crew cut no nonsense guy - think of Kurt Russell in Soldier, there's a passing resemblence.  

As the FNG, you're dropped off to meet your team just as they are scrambling to investigate the interruption of a comm relay nearby, suspected to be the work of rebels.  Who the rebels are and why they have a problem with the authorities on Reach is never explained, but from what you overhear early in the game there's been more than a few incidents of rebels causing michief, and at first it's assumed the silence of the comm relay is just another such event.  

The first few minutes of the game demonstrates quite clearly this isn't your older brother's Halo.  The new game engine does an outstanding job of rendering the visuals Bungie has created, and it immediately becomes apparent the game has been created with a cinematic feel in mind.  The impression you are starring in your own science fiction blockbuster is stronger than ever.  In fact, the 'Theater' in the main menu lets you replay saved missions over again where you can watch yourself and Noble Team run through the mission from a variety of camera angles.  Even blown up to it's highest magnification on my Vizio 55" HDTV the picture remained sharp and clear.  

Having had 4 games to tweak the controls and the shooting tech, firing weapons, aiming and driving/flying is a snap.  Halo never had a clunky control scheme to begin with, and it's now been perfected to a level where at no time in the game was I ever wondering which button, trigger or keypad to use. 

Bungie has always had what I think is one of the best game difficulty progressions.  Easy is what you expect, where it's possible for you to die, but it's rare.  You never really need to take cover or think strategically because you can pretty much run and gun and kill everything in sight with just a few rounds.  Normal jumps the difficulty up just right, where instead of 1-2 rounds it now takes 5-6 to put a Grunt down and enemies are smarter and starting to take cover and coming much closer with their grenades.  Heroic and you start paying for mistakes, getting flanked, taking much more cover and having to count your bullets because it takes plenty of ammo to get something to drop now.  

And then there's Legendary, which makes grown men cry and damage their controllers, kick their dog and maybe finally start paying attention to their girlfriend.  It's not fair. It's just not fair.  Because it's not meant to be fair. It's legendary! 

Nothing makes casual gamers retreat like scalded puppies more than trying to play this game for a few minutes on Legendary.  Even trying to use your indestructible not-able-to-die team mates as bodyguards/shields won't work on this level.  

Although you can't upgrade your weapons, Bungie did add an interchangable armor bonus feature that you can use.  You can equip the following armor abilities when you spot a colored ordinance case:

1. Sprint - allows you to run very fast for brief periods.
2. Hologram - sends a fake image of you running forward and standing out in the open for 10 seconds.  Great for drawing enemy fire and finding out if there are hostiles around the corner.  
3. Jet Pack - fly the not-so-friendly skies. 
4. Bubble Shield - cover up beneath this shield to avoid damage and then send out a brief EMP pulse taking down the shields of any enemies close to you. 
5. Active Camo - you disappear in Predator-like fashion, though an enemy looking carefully can still see you.  

Through a rank advancement system,  you can also spend credits received to unlock armor items, though it's never really spelled out if these new armor pieces give any boost to Noble Six's performance.  It could be they just look cool.  

The Single Player campaign has 10 total levels, though the 10th one comes after the credits have rolled and it shows Noble Six's last stand as the sole suriviving member of Noble Team. 

Not counting the beginning level, which is a bunch of introductory cut scenes, and that final level, the remaining 9 are very varied in their game play.  Some levels are run n' gun, others call for scouting/sniping.  Environments vary from scenic farms to urban landscapes.  

Every time I see the Warthog with someone manning the gun come flying over the top of a hill, I hear the theme from 'Rat Patrol'!

And the trademark vehicle driving is here in spades; on several levels you'll drive jeeps or operate the gun in the back while another team member drives.  Your old friend the Scorpion Tank makes an appearance, and Bungie adds a new twist by introducing space combat, where Noble Six pilots a fighter defending an Alliance ship under attack off planet.  

For various parts of missions  you'll be teamed up with a particular team mate.  Jun will team up with you for the start of the Nightfall level, as  you scout a Covenant base, then he will be replaced by Jorge as you attempt to accomplish an important mission deep inside a Covenant Corvette battlecruiser.  Each one has their own way and style of doing things, and it often fun to watch them in action.  

As the campaign unfolds the Spartans come to realize this is a full scale planetary invasion, and they are going to lose.  Watching your team members fall one by one creates a series of poignant moments. 

None probably more touching than Carter, who's constant hard-ass banter with Kat disguises his great affection for her, refusing to leave her body behind after she suddenly falls from a sniper round through the head, and carries her tenderly in his arms for the rest of the level.

In the end the story of Reach isn't one of defeat after all, as the final cut scene reveals. 

Again we see the same Spartan helmet from the opening scene, still lying in a field, still having that huge hole in the visor.......only now field around it is green and lush and full of life.   Reach - and humanity - has survived because of the Spartan's sacrifice.  

While there will be more Halo games now that another developer is handling the franchise, they will have their work cut out for them if they're going to top Bungie's fond farewell.