Immigration Push: Media Fall Into Their Own Trayvon Trap

Left and Right seem to agree that the trial of George Zimmerman, the Florida man on trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin, has thus far been a debacle for the prosecution and therefore a media that cynically hyped a local crime into a national story. But the media are now stuck with the monster they themselves created, and now this monster is hurting the left’s push to create millions of new Democrats via immigration reform.

As I write this, both CNN and MSNBC are broadcasting wall-to-wall live coverage of the Zimmerman trial (Fox News is covering everything else and the trial), and the timing could not be worse for Democrats. The United States Senate just voted overwhelmingly for an immigration reform package, which means that this is when the media are supposed to kick in on their end of the deal and put enormous pressure on the GOP House to do the same. Only they can’t because they have to follow through on a local story they artificially hyped and are now stuck with.

There is just no doubt that, were it not for this trial, both CNN and MSNBC would currently be in hyper-drive doing everything in their power to pressure the GOP House into voting for immigration reform. This is what the media always does to push Obama’s agenda. We saw it with his re-election, gun control, same-sex marriage, the budget battle, and sequester. Obama makes something a priority, the media then make it a priority; and for days and even months (see: control, gun) the media push as hard as they can to win one for The O.

This time, though, the media outsmarted themselves. For politically divisive purposes, a president in a tight re-election battle wanted to make a national story out of the Zimmerman case. Naturally, in order to help him out, the media slavishly agreed. But now the trial is not only not going the way the media had hoped, but upon the realization that a guy with the last name Zimmerman is in fact Hispanic, the racially-divisive angle pretty much blew up.

What has to be most frustrating for the media, though, is that their own creation is currently smothering crucial momentum for an immigration reform package the media desperately wanted to aggressively push.   

 

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