News and information about Trayvon Martin's death dominates the media. It wasn't always that way, the shooting occurred on February 26th but the national media reports didn't start until March 8th and intensified with each subsequent release of the 911 tapes, video, rallies with chants of "no justice, no peace," protests, petitions on Facebook and donning of hoodies by clergy, their flock et al.
According to the Pew Research Center, it is the top story for the second consecutive week.
Their weekly News Interest Index survey, conducted March 29-April 1 surveyed 1,000 adults and found both a racial and partisan divide among whether folks felt the case is receiving too much coverage in the media.
According to the survey, 43 percent of whites compared to 16 percent of blacks surveyed felt there was too much coverage of Trayvon's death. 56 percent of Republicans compared with 37 percent of Independents and 25 percent of Democrats felt there was too much coverage.
Additionally, 58 percent of blacks state that news of Trayvon is their top story as compared with 24 percent of whites.
Regardless of race, 38 percent of Democrats are closely following the case as compared with 19% of Republicans.
It is against this backdrop of divisions based on race and political party affiliation that the expectations around coverage of the case mirror our expectations around resolution of or at least despite the "stand your ground law" an arrest, indictment, grand jury hearing, or some srt of legal action.
That is what fuels the media interest in the case for most blacks and Democrats and it would seem that most whites and Republicans think that there is no need for any adjudication of this case and therefore no need for its media domination.
It would be interesting to see how other races and ethnicities feel about this considering that the shooter, George Zimmerman is Latino.
Although this is generally discussed as a black and white issue, it is far from being that simplistic. Clearly there is minimally much more talking to be done.