George Zimmerman sues NBC

George Zimmerman, who has been charged with the second-degree murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, is suing NBC Universal for defamation. He claims the news broadcasting network, when it aired the 911 call Zimmerman made minutes before he fatally shot Martin, edited out parts of the call to willfully make Zimmerman appear racist. “NBC saw the death of Trayvon Martin not as a tragedy but as an opportunity to increase ratings, and so set about to create a myth that George Zimmerman was a racist and predatory villain,” the lawsuit read. “Because of NBC’s deceptive and exploitative manipulations, the public wrongly believes that Zimmerman ‘us(ed) a racial epithet’ while describing Martin during the call to the dispatcher on that fateful night.”

Specifically, the call aired on NBC did not include the 911 dispatcher asking Zimmerman if Martin looked white, black, or hispanic. This created the impression that Zimmerman made the statement that Martin was black without any prompting. The lawsuit will be claiming compensation for damages caused by the death threats Zimmerman is now recieving which have become so numerous and intense that he is forced to live in hiding.