Why does the media focus on looting?

[The Big Dog]

They were taken by two different photographers, who both provided detailed explanations for exactly why they INDEPENDENTLY captioned the photographs as they did.

No it is just referencing news reports from katrina.

http://www.snopes.com/katrina/photos/looters.asp

already addressed this detour. tnks

 

[TriangleMan]

TV news is a visual medium. Newspapers prefer interesting pictures to help capture the reader's attention. That the media would focus on immediate rioting, looting and violence is not surprising to me at all.

And what has changed about Mr. Gray in the last 24 hours? He is still dead, his injuries have already been reported, IIRC the police involved were suspended, was there any big developments the media should have focused on?

 

[Arcade22]

Once again our nation's police murder someone and a city rises up against them.

They are rising up against the police? Then explain why all the looting and rioting causes far more harm and damage to people other than the police? This "city" seems more self-destructive than anything. I mean it's like punching a random bystander in the chest because someone else pissed you off instead of doing something to the guy who pissed you off.

In fact this rioting and looting might make the police officers use of excessive force, arbitrary detention and other sleazy behavior seem reasonable and acceptable by onlookers since they stop sympathizing not only with those actively burning cars, looting stores or robbing people but also members of the community they come from in general.

 

[TragicMonkey]

I don't understand why everybody doesn't politely play by the rules of the system that is actively killing them.

 

[Ziggurat]

I don't understand why everybody doesn't politely play by the rules of the system that is actively killing them.

I don't understand why you think this is the only alternative to looting and arson.

 

[Axiom_Blade]

I don't understand why you think this is the only alternative to looting and arson.

I don't understand why people are focusing on looting and arson instead of the person who was murdered by the police.

 

[The Big Dog]

I don't understand why people are focusing on looting and arson instead of the person who was murdered by the police.

Not sure if serious.

 

[Ziggurat]

I don't understand why people are focusing on looting and arson instead of the person who was murdered by the police.

TriangleMan already answered that question, but I will add to it: riots and arson can end up killing a lot more than one person. They have before.

 

[phiwum]

You answered a strawman question. Probably because you couldn't answer the one asked.

According to the photographer who took the picture of the white residents "finding" stuff, they did not enter a store. The goods were literally floating out in the street. So, the fact that persons (of both races) were taking goods that were floating out in the street, no longer in a condition to be sold by the store (which, obviously, was flooded out) explains why he used the word "found". No subconscious motives required.

The other photographer saw the subjects enter the store and leave with goods, and so he chose the word "loot". Certainly, it would be misleading to use the word "found" in that situation.

Again, so subconscious presumption of racism is necessary for the word choices here.

 

[Axiom_Blade]

Not sure if serious.

Of course I'm not serious! Police arresting people, killing them, and then covering that up? I mean, really, okay...the guy must've done something wrong, or he wouldn't have been involved with the police in the first place. We can dicker all day about whether or not it's right that he was killed, but at the end of the day, we don't know the exact circumstances, and we probably never will, so we should just drop it. Everybody's going to have their own opinion and whatever, and no amount of arguing will solve anything, so we should just forget it ever happened, really.

On the other hand, riots are exciting and shocking and don't involve any of that tedious ethical and philosophical nonsense, so we should talk about some dudes lighting a trash can on fire for at least a few hundred pages.

 

[The Big Dog]

Of course I'm not serious! Police arresting people, killing them, and then covering that up? I mean, really, okay...the guy must've done something wrong, or he wouldn't have been involved with the police in the first place. We can dicker all day about whether or not it's right that he was killed, but at the end of the day, we don't know the exact circumstances, and we probably never will, so we should just drop it. Everybody's going to have their own opinion and whatever, and no amount of arguing will solve anything, so we should just forget it ever happened, really.

On the other hand, riots are exciting and shocking and don't involve any of that tedious ethical and philosophical nonsense, so we should talk about some dudes lighting a trash can on fire for at least a few hundred pages.

Just going to convict the police of murder, are ya? And compare burning down several massive structures while attacking the firefighters with cinder blocks to "trash can fires."

Ok!

 

[TragicMonkey]

I don't understand why you think this is the only alternative to looting and arson.

I don't understand why you think I said it was "the only alternative". Feel free to use the quote function to show me where that happened.

 

[Axiom_Blade]

Here's an interesting Martin Luther King Jr. quote on rioting (emphasis mine):

…I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.

 

[Biscuit]

a lady was asking an MSNBC reporter why there was no media in Baltimore for a week of peaceful protests but after one night of riots and looting the entire nations media shows up. The reporter fumbled for a bit before throwing coverage back to the studio.

It's kind of sick the way they are lurking around just waiting for some violence to erupt. The number of times they have talked about violence and the lack of fans at a baseball game far outshines their discussions of the event that lead to all of this.

 

[Ziggurat]

I don't understand why you think I said it was "the only alternative". Feel free to use the quote function to show me where that happened.

It was implicit in the logic of your question. Of course, maybe I was wrong to assume your question was logical.

 

[The Big Dog]

a lady was asking an MSNBC reporter why there was no media in Baltimore for a week of peaceful protests but after one night of riots and looting the entire nations media shows up. The reporter fumbled for a bit before throwing coverage back to the studio.

It's kind of sick the way they are lurking around just waiting for some violence to erupt. The number of times they have talked about violence and the lack of fans at a baseball game far outshines their discussions of the event that lead to all of this.

presumably she fumbled around because the question was bull ****.

 

[TragicMonkey]

It was implicit in the logic of your question. Of course, maybe I was wrong to assume your question was logical.

I didn't ask a question. Your strawman is not "implicit" in the statement I made. Yes, you are wrong. And no, your mischaracterization of my statement is in no way logical.

 

[WildCat]

Black people, as proposed by a comedian I stole the line from but whose name I cannot recall, should take a cue from history. "Discover" things... like the explorers and colonists did with The Americas. When they stop you with a PS3 climbing through a broken window, "Whoa! I'm not stealing this. I discovered it!"

Is there a race on the planet that didn't take over land previously occupied by others?

Do you think sub-Saharan Africa was always occupied by the majority race living there now?

It always amuses me when those ignorant of history post crapola like that.

Even the American Indian tribes conquered other tribes, the ones living in the desert weren't there by choice, it's because stronger tribes took over the lands their ancestors occupied.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Is there a race on the planet that didn't take over land previously occupied by others?

Do you think sub-Saharan Africa was always occupied by the majority race living there now?

It always amuses me when those ignorant of history post crapola like that.

Even the American Indian tribes conquered other tribes, the ones living in the desert weren't there by choice, it's because stronger tribes took over the lands their ancestors occupied.

And when the Native American tribes conquered and took over the lands of their competing neighbors, we generally refer to that as "seized" or "conquered",.... not "discovered". That's the point of the joke. We, the noble White Man, discovered these backward areas and brought them civilization and the Love of Jeebus and in return took away all their properties and rights.

Ya see, it was a joke. From a comedian. Posted in response to a barb posted by someone else. There's truth in a lot of humor. Uncomfortable truth and not precisely accurate truth, but the underlying theme is interesting in an Arsenio Hall sorta way.....

 

[Travis]

That's not fair. His leading sentence seems accurate. He seems to be bothered by something. The cops do appear to have murdered someone. A city has protested.

Now, the whole Warsaw uprising analogy is bizarre, and I can't imagine why he's upset that thousands of violent, criminal looters are news, and I don't see how reporting this newsworthy event makes the media lazy or agenda-driven.....but that's Travis for you.

How is the Warsay uprising analogy bizarre? People in both cities lived in constant fear of those that ran their cities who were abusing and degrading their respective populations that they deemed as subhuman. One rose up against them and got slaughtered the other is now finally at long last mounting appropriate retaliatory actions and it is dismissed by the pejoratives "riots" and "looting".

This is something that always bugs me. Once again our nation's police murder someone and a city rises up against them. But all the media wants to talk about are looted stores. That's like covering the Warsaw uprising and only talking about how much it will cost to clean up all the bricks laying scattered about.

The hi-lited parts are false. the "all the media wants to talk about" is ludicrously false.

the stricken sentence is grossly inappropriate hyperbole.

You have odd ideas about things that are supposedly false.