April 16, 2012
The media has been criticized for its sensationalist coverage of the shooting of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, magnifying the racial aspect of the story. NBC-TV has even had to fire a producer who edited a tape for broadcast that incorrectly made shooter George Zimmernan sound like he was singling out Martin because he was black. Americans overall give mixed reviews to the media coverage of the Martin case, but there is a wide racial difference of opinion.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 33% of American Adults rate the media's handling of the Martin death and its aftermath as good or excellent. Thirty-nine percent (39%) think the media has done a poor job in this case. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
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The survey of 1,000 Adults nationwide was conducted on April 11-12, 2012 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.