How The Media Frames Riots
The great religion reporter Ari Goldman has written "Telling It Like It Wasn't," a fascinating piece analyzing the media coverage of the Crown Heights riots from 1991. He covered them for the New York Times. It's worth considering this when thinking about the frames through which the media will force the UK riots:
My job was to file memos to the main “rewrite” reporters back in the Times office in Manhattan about what I saw and heard. We had no laptops or cellphones in those days so the other reporters and I went to payphones and dictated our memos to a waiting band of stenographers in the home office…Yet, when I picked up the paper, the article I read was not the story I had reported. I saw headlines that described the riots in terms solely of race. “Two Deaths Ignite Racial Clash in Tense Brooklyn Neighborhood,” the Times headline said. And, worse, I read an opening paragraph, what journalists call a “lead,” that was simply untrue:
“Hasidim and blacks clashed in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn through the day and into the night yesterday.” In all my reporting during the riots I never saw — or heard of — any violence by Jews against blacks. But the Times was dedicated to this version of events: blacks and Jews clashing amid racial tensions. To show Jewish culpability in the riots, the paper even ran a picture — laughable even at the time — of a chasidic man brandishing an open umbrella before a police officer in riot gear. The caption read: “A police officer scuffling with a Hasidic man yesterday on President Street.” ...
I didn’t blame the “rewrite” reporter. I blamed the editors. It was clear that they had settled on a “frame” for the story. The way they saw it, there were two narratives here: the white narrative and the black narrative. And both had equal weight.
I analyze media coverage of religion news over at GetReligion.org and we continue to see the way religion stories about oppressors and victims continue to be framed as clashes with equal weight. This happens most notably now when it refers to crackdowns on the Coptic community -- including bombings and murders -- in Egypt by Islamists.
These UK riots aren't about religion, but how will they be framed?
Anne Applebaum, arguing that Brits are just known for senseless riots, says:
Scan the comment pages of the British press, and you will find a wide range of explanations. Read the center-right Daily Telegraph, and you will learn that the riots were caused by a weak and cowardly police force, absent fathers, welfare dependency, or multiculturalism and the tolerance of gangs in schools. Read the center-left Guardian, and you will be informed that police brutality, social exclusion, and cuts in welfare spending and the widening gap between rich and poor are to blame. Some are convinced that high levels of immigration are at fault. Others believe the problem lies in British intolerance of immigrants and minorities.
So the elite opinion will probably settle on Applebaum's "nothing" approach or the Guardian's view that rioters are somehow justified and need to be supported. Something tells me that they will be bewildered at the public's lack of satisfaction with those explanations and even more bewildered if a movement against the implosion of social order gains momentum.
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Apr '11
Re: How The Media Frames Riots
The spin's already in-the cuts are to blame and the "youths" just need to keep their "youth centers" and Educational Management Allowance. The same thing will come here if the stuff that smells hits the fan.
We had the Tea Party Downgrade, they have the Cuts Riots.
http://bit.ly/p41QIv
Re: How The Media Frames Riots
Every journalist, I think, has had that experience--seeing a story you filed edited in some way that signally changes the meaning, and seeing a headline on top of it that says nearly the opposite of what you said.
And of course, having been an editor, I also know that a lot of journalists file lousy, incomprehensible copy, and if you've got a print deadline, you just have to guess what they meant.
I love writing for City Journal because they're such careful and scrupulous editors.
Jun '10
Re: How The Media Frames Riots
The hardest "bias" to correct (in the editing) is the bias of the outdoor security camera. Those cameras are so racist.
May '10
Re: How The Media Frames Riots
Journalism can be a dreadful profession. Some people are forced to report on subjects they have little knowledge of and screw up through ignorance. Others can get too close to their subjects and allow personal feelings for their subjects to interfere with the facts. Others become financially entangled in the subject they cover through marriage or investment. The problem is that the reader is clueless to all the biases and takes their reports as being factual.
Nov '10
Re: How The Media Frames Riots
As Theodore Dalrymple believes, consistently lax law enforcement is to blame. I quote him, as quoted by the WSJ:
"...question in Britain is not why there are so many burglars, but why there are so few...only about one in 12 domestic burlaries is cleared up by the police...and of the burglars who are convicted, only about one in 12 or 13 is sent to prison."
They need Giuliani for mayor.
Feb '11
Re: How The Media Frames Riots
Mollie, you've already fallen into the left's way of thinking. Surely there are reasons this happened, and many of those cited by Applebaum may indeed have contributed. For conservatives, though, the "why?" isn't so important; after all, we (generally) believe in humanity's fallibility and weakness. Besides, we can never really know the minds and souls of these people and it's really not fruitful to attempt it; whatever their problems, these people have a duty not to disrupt order lest they forfeit their place in society. The more important questions to those who cherish civilization and community are:
Re: How The Media Frames Riots
Ed G.: Mollie, you've already fallen into the left's way of thinking. Surely there are reasons this happened, and many of those cited by Applebaum may indeed have contributed. For conservatives, though, the "why?" isn't so important; after all, we (generally) believe in humanity's fallibility and weakness. Besides, we can never really know the minds and souls of these people and it's really not fruitful to attempt it; whatever their problems, these people have a duty not to disrupt order lest they forfeit their place in society. The more important questions to those who cherish civilization and community are: · Aug 11 at 5:33pm
Actually, I completely agree. I'm not disinterested in the why but much more interested in how society responds.
Feb '11
Re: How The Media Frames Riots
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.
Ed G.: Mollie, you've already fallen into the left's way of thinking. Surely there are reasons this happened, and many of those cited by Applebaum may indeed have contributed. For conservatives, though, the "why?" isn't so important; after all, we (generally) believe in humanity's fallibility and weakness. Besides, we can never really know the minds and souls of these people and it's really not fruitful to attempt it; whatever their problems, these people have a duty not to disrupt order lest they forfeit their place in society. The more important questions to those who cherish civilization and community are: · Aug 11 at 5:33pm
Actually, I completely agree. I'm not disinterested in the why but much more interested in how society responds. · Aug 11 at 10:10pm
Interesting times we're living in.