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Why does the media focus on looting?

theprestige said:
Moral of the story: Don't waste time worrying about Tea Party rhetoric when the left is perpetrating real violence.
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And the right has come very close,like in the Bundy incident in Nevada.
Not to mention various Abortion Clinic bombings....

The violence takes different forms.
 
dudalb said:
And the right has come very close,like in the Bundy incident in Nevada.
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Funny you should mention that. Bundy had a beef with the government, and he was willing to engage in brinkmanship with the government. While there was some risk of violence, there was as far as I know never any risk of looting, arson, rioting, or any other harm to innocent bystanders. The only people involved were the ones protesting the government, and the government agents sent to confront them. And even then, there was no violence. If that's what the Tea Party looks like, we should be so lucky if all anti-government protests looked the same. If the leftist uprising in Baltimore took their strategy cues from Cliven Bundy, that would be a huge improvement, and mark them as praiseworthy and meriting serious consideration.

Not to mention various Abortion Clinic bombings....
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Which has what to do with Tea Party rhetoric?

The violence takes different forms.
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Different meaning lesser.
 
dudalb said:
I am really afraid the rise of the Tea Party..whom I dislike a lot...has now caused an equivalent to rise up on the left.
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False equivalence.

When the loons on the left have a significant fraction of the Democratic caucus like the Tea Party has in the Republican caucus, then I'll agree with you.

Or when the loons on the left propose that Das Kapital be the state book like the Tea Party has proposed for the Bible, then I'll agree with you.

Or when the loons on the left propose that personhood begins 6 months after birth in a manner that the Tea Party has proposed Personhood Amendments which define personhood for a zygote, then I'll agree with you.

Or, more locally, when Travis is at the head of a big parade of people who agree with him like 16.5, theprestige, and several others who march in lock step, then I'll agree with you.
 
phiwum said:
To be fair, the media arguably have an obligation to bring attention to important news.

We're just killing time, shooting the breeze about whatever strikes our fancy on an online forum.

When the media brings attention to an important story, they have the ability to contribute to needed change.

When we talk about recent events, the world tends to keep on spinning.

I'm not sure the two situations are particularly comparable.
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And also: this isn't our job.

Tom Fenton has written a couple of books about how the news industry has scrapped an important element of their job: identifying which stories are important for citizens to be informed about.

His thesis is that shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, news became totally committed to being part of the entertainment industry. This generated a downward spiral of uninformed citizenry: new information was 'confusing' so news directors would spike stories with unfamiliar names. Like "Osama bin Laden." Or "Al Queda." Or "Kurds." Or "Kosovo." The theory was that new information doesn't sell well. Not sure how they reconciled that with the concept of being a news program. But we can see how an audience eventually formed out of tuning into being told what they already know. Literally "Dittoheads."

So, as those problems metastasized, the US' willingness to allocate resources to dealing with them was crippled by voters' lack of comprehension and interest. In the meantime, top news was about Michael Jackson's monkey, Presidential blowjobs, Princess Diana and OJ.

Reporters learned that 'important news' was not going to be done in traditional newsrooms anymore. And here we are.


Regarding the OP... I'm actually thinking that newmedia has been ignoring looters for years. Specifically, illegal Civil Forfeiture from police departments like this one. Estimates are that law enforcement has looted US citizens 25 billion dollars since 1986. But that's rarely been a top news story.

The question is really: why does media focus on poor people looting?
 
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SezMe said:
False equivalence.

When the loons on the left have a significant fraction of the Democratic caucus like the Tea Party has in the Republican caucus, then I'll agree with you.

Or when the loons on the left propose that Das Kapital be the state book like the Tea Party has proposed for the Bible, then I'll agree with you.

Or when the loons on the left propose that personhood begins 6 months after birth in a manner that the Tea Party has proposed Personhood Amendments which define personhood for a zygote, then I'll agree with you.

Or, more locally, when Travis is at the head of a big parade of people who agree with him like 16.5, theprestige, and several others who march in lock step, then I'll agree with you.
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das Kapotal was full of fanciful nonsense, but as a "state book" it is so superior to the bible as to make the comparison ridiculous. Lord of the Rings contains fewer fairy tales than the bible.
 
phiwum said:
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, no subconscious presumption of racism is necessary for the word choices here.
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But, but, but...

Stop ruining a good jam session about "white privilege" and "subconscious racism" with rationality and relevant, detailed facts about the reasons those word choices were made!!!

We have to pretend any situations that SJWs choose to try to compare are identical in every possible respect other than the skin color of the people in those situations, and you need to quit ruining the narrative by pointing out that different situations are different... and details matter.

Don't you realize what a buzz they get from an opportunity to knock some privileged white couple who found some bread down a peg by confidently asserting that they are looters? Don't you realize how noble and non-racist it makes them, as white people themselves (usually) to stand up, bravely, and point at other white people and call them racist?

Look, you just don't get it. The point here is for them to have their grand-standing moment where they showed not only how color-blind they are by asserting that the white couple were just as deserving of being labeled looters, but how racist the media and other, bad white people are for not being as color-blind as them.

When you come up in here with all this factual information that completely negates and disproves that storyline, it really bums them out and ruins a perfectly good white-bashing narrative. Could you stop doing that?
 
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Media is focusing on the looting because this is what these riots are about. Obama is right (to a degree) when he says that there is no ideological justification. Of course they are not fighting for "civil rights" or some kind of Marxist project. What you see is the reaction of people who are completely immersed in the ideology of our day: Consumerism. Their goal in life is to consume all the nice things advertised on TV, but due to their poverty this is not possible. So when a riot breaks out, they do what seems to be the only subversion left: taking these objects without paying for them, finally making their ideology work for them.
 
Ts4EVER said:
Media is focusing on the looting because this is what these riots are about. Obama is right (to a degree) when he says that there is no ideological justification. Of course they are not fighting for "civil rights" or some kind of Marxist project. What you see is the reaction of people who are completely immersed in the ideology of our day: Consumerism. Their goal in life is to consume all the nice things advertised on TV, but due to their poverty this is not possible. So when a riot breaks out, they do what seems to be the only subversion left: taking these objects without paying for them, finally making their ideology work for them.
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I like this post for the most part but I disagree a bit.

From what I've seen, the things being looted in Baltimore are not likely to be the sort of items the looters are gaining access to for the first time. I think it's true that a lot of these people are in "poverty" but not the kind of poverty where they aren't getting the essentials. The kind of poverty where you can still end up with a good TV and a game system, a nice pair of sneakers, etc. as long as you have bad priorities and bad money management and a social safety net to fall back on, or family members to mooch off of.

They're stealing stuff they already have because they are criminals and this is an excuse to engage in some theft with very little fear of consequences, and get some additional stuff without paying for it. Maybe they'll try to sell it or maybe they'll use it themselves, but I don't agree that these are consumer items they are getting their hands on for the first time.

A riot is the language of the uncivilized.
 
Skeptic Tank said:
I like this post for the most part but I disagree a bit.

From what I've seen, the things being looted in Baltimore are not likely to be the sort of items the looters are gaining access to for the first time. I think it's true that a lot of these people are in "poverty" but not the kind of poverty where they aren't getting the essentials. The kind of poverty where you can still end up with a good TV and a game system, a nice pair of sneakers, etc. as long as you have bad priorities and bad money management and a social safety net to fall back on, or family members to mooch off of.

They're stealing stuff they already have because they are criminals and this is an excuse to engage in some theft with very little fear of consequences, and get some additional stuff without paying for it. Maybe they'll try to sell it or maybe they'll use it themselves, but I don't agree that these are consumer items they are getting their hands on for the first time.

A riot is the language of the uncivilized.
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Black or white, I would say it's more a dance of discarding civilized behavior in a consequence free atmosphere.
 
SezMe said:
Wooooosh.
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Not at all. I got it........I just think you understated the ridiculousness of the conservative notion that the bible would be a good guide for government. There are no liberals that actually advocate using Das Kapital (your point)......but if there were, they would still be less wrong than conservatives, almost all of whom believe the bible nonsense.
 
sarge said:
Not at all. I got it........I just think you understated the ridiculousness of the conservative notion that the bible would be a good guide for government. There are no liberals that actually advocate using Das Kapital (your point)......but if there were, they would still be less wrong than conservatives, almost all of whom believe the bible nonsense.
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Anecdote: your post in hyperbolic misrepresentation of the conservative position by a liberal.

Data:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0050092

When asked to characterize the moral values of others, liberals were the least accurate.
 
Skeptic Tank said:
A riot is the language of the uncivilized.
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I disagree, and it's precisely because Vancouver had two serious riots that I think my opinion reversed on this.

Riots seem to be nothing more than crowd behavior. When the charges for the most recent Vancouver riot came around, we were learning that the participants were everything from multimillion dollar revenue generating rental condo owners to medical students who were the sons of millionaires, to ordinary blue collar workers. The rioters were a cross-section of the local population, almost none had any priors.

In Baltimore, the rioters are a cross-section of the local population. It's a crime of opportunity by the looks of it.

Riots are the language of a failure of law enforcement.
 
blutoski said:
The rioters were a cross-section of the local population, almost none had any priors.
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Some people act civilized because they are civilized. Some people act civilized because they are afraid of the consequences of doing otherwise.

The fact that these rioters appeared otherwise respectable does not mean that they were. All it means is that you can't always tell who the bad people are.

Riots are the language of a failure of law enforcement.
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Quite often, yes. The second category above will cease to act civilized when they believe there are no consequences for doing so.
 
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