Fanning the Flames: The Media Makes the News

Then, as now, lawless elements took advantage of legitimate and passionate protests as an opportunity for looting and arson. 

During the curfew which was 24/7 then, we hunkered down, watching the news, and wondering how apparently law-enforcing security guards could grab goods from their own store and rush down the street. 

This was and is a story about herd-mentality – if others can get away with it then so can we. 

Originally this was magnified in the here and now by the 24/7 news coverage, which was hijacked for lawlessness by miscreants as they could see in real time where the LAPD had no presence and what shops were ripe for looting. 

Then some reporters in Los Angeles and elsewhere started making an effort to show more positive images. But was it a case of too little too late? 

Perhaps not, for several reasons. 

In the past 10 days, we’ve seen a reporter shot with a rubber bullet in Long Beach, a news crew sprayed with pepper bullets in Louisville, a photojournalist blinded in Minneapolis, a reporter arrested in New York City. Journalists have been attacked with tear gas in a number of cities. Foreign correspondents from Canada, Sweden and Australia have been injured. 

The world is watching. And condemning the U.S. government. This will not be forgotten. 

And the protests have not stopped. In fact, they have grown, despite Trump’s threats and the activation of National Guard troops in many areas to protect cities from arson and looting. 

But just who are these fire bugs? Who are the looters? 

Are they those who protest because the lives of George Floyd and Breanna Taylor really do matter, and that the actions of an Amy Cooper are truly despicable? 

No. We’ve actually seen examples of them protecting businesses and isolated police officers from the vandals. 

Are they anarchists spurred on by Trump tweetstorms taking advantage of the democratic action on the streets? Possibly. 

Or are they those who have the most to lose if society is remade to benefit the people of the United States – the crony capitalists of Wall Street? 

They may suck on the teats of corporate welfare as they destroy the American economy, but they are more unlikely to participate in violence – it’s bad for the bottom line. 

Contents under pressure will always explode and for far too long too many ordinary Americans have suffered in silence. Perhaps a tipping point has finally been reached. 

Not just in reaction to racist policing and the widening rift due to redlining and prioritizing profits over people. 

Not just from Trump and the total evisceration of a government accountable to the people. Not just in the short-term selfishness of the 1% who hide in gated estates as the world burns, literally as well as figuratively. 

The compelling core of this White House is its desire to revel in chaos. Destruction for the sake of destruction. 

The compelling core of this White House is its outright abrogation of any moral leadership; so we must now become our own leaders. 

We thought we had some in California and Los Angeles with Gavin Newsom and Eric Garcetti in their initial approach to the pandemic, but both have been sucked under by the dark side. 

Yes, we need to calm the City, but it can be done by embracing the concerns of the people who stand together against not only police brutality but also social and economic injustice. 

Instead of tallying up how many cop cars were burned and how much it will cost to replace them, instead of trying to score brownie points by taking a token amount of money out of the police budget, the City should be looking at how much goodwill it could buy by putting the cops on the street and really investing that money in the community. 

So, the question becomes: can the news machine become a proactive agent for change? 

Can they avoid the debacle of 2016 when every station focused on Trump’s outrageousness to keep eyeballs glued to their channel to satisfy their corporate sponsors? Which was a factor in Trump’s election. 

Can they emulate the founding fathers whose news was spread through broadsides and pamphlets to educate the people of colonial America into a revolution?  

A revolution to regain the rights to freedom of speech, of assembly, and to petition the government for change. 

Can they start fanning the flames of positive change?

(Liz Amsden is an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives.  She also writes on behalf of the Budget Advocates’ mission regarding the City’s budget and services. In her real life she works on budgets, for film and television, where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today’s world.) Photo: KTLA Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.