Independent and ethnic media often push stories into mainstream media

Here's an important comment from public TV host TAVIS SMILEY about the case of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African American who was followed, shot and killed by an overzealous neighborhood watchman in Florida in 2012, after an altercation. The neighborhood watchman was acquitted of murder charges; Martin had been unarmed.

With these issues of race and violence and what we’ve been experiencing of late, the alternative media is more important and more necessary now than ever before. And by alternative, I certainly mean specifically the black media. I go back to the Trayvon Martin case . . . The reality is that that story would never have made it to the front pages were it not for black media: black radio, and the presence that wasn’t there 15 years ago, but black radio and the black blogosphere blew that story up. The mainstream media — I’m talking about the Washington Post, the New York Times,everybody, Time, Newsweek — the mainstream media was late getting to that story. Had it not been for black radio and the black blogosphere, that story would never have taken hold. And that’s not really surprising. Oftentimes the mainstream media, particularly where people of color are concerned — it’s on the late freight. So the alternative media, black press in particular, are more relevant and more necessary now than ever before.