4 ms·

About a week ago, tens of thousands of black people peacefully gathered at the Washington Mall. Their reasons for coming together were not too dissimilar from t

About a week ago, tens of thousands of black people peacefully gathered at the Washington Mall. Their reasons for coming together were not too dissimilar from the rioters of past incidents. Nary a peep was heard out of the mainstream media about this peaceful march. Riots, on the other hand, seem to cause the media hordes to descend and at least draw attention to the cause. It's hard to argue the fact that they are at least useful for consciousness -raising.

Kalium 11y ago
It sure raised my consciousness. Clear into what they didn't want. It should be noted that studies of the subject show that riots tend to make voters in areas that hosted riots more conservative.
- marcusgarvey 11y ago
  It should be noted that, for millennia, violence and destruction are considered perfectly acceptable means for accomplishing political objectives. But only when performed by state actors, of course. IMO: the riots start out as protests. Then a minority of people choose to cause mayhem. Another minority are criminals and they do what criminals do, which is act opportunistically. And yes, agents provocateur do exist. But sure, I can understand why people who are directly affected would prefer to have no protests at all out of fear that a riot might happen. They love order more than justice, an attitude which, ironically, has helped to create the very same conditions that people are protesting.
  - Kalium 11y ago
    It's much easier for people to be principled when their self-interest is not at stake. I'm not opposed to peaceful protests. I've been in some myself. I am very much against riots and romanticizing riots as a form of productive protest. Agent provocateurs do exist, but I think it's unreasonable to pretend (as some do) that all riots are due to such.
    - marcusgarvey 11y ago
      >It's much easier for people to be principled when their self-interest is not at stake. You are certainly right about that.
anigbrowl 11y ago
That's BS. The entire event was televised on C-Span, it was covered on every nightly news program (in California anyway) and got plenty of (mostly positive) newspaper coverage as well: https://www.google.com/search?q=washington+march+farrakhan&oq=washington+march+farrakhan&aqs=chrome..69i57.4319j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=0&ie=UTF-8#q=washington+march+farrakhan&safe=off&tbm=nws https://www.google.com/search?q=washington+march+farrakhan&o... I apologize for making a generalization, but whenever I see anyone of any political alignment suggesting that their issue of choice is being ignored/suppressed the mainstream media, the claim is almost invariably without merit.
- marcusgarvey 11y ago
  Well, let's just take a closer look at Google News, shall we? Google News has a handy feature: when you search for a topic, under the first result is an option to explore in depth, and it shows you the number of additional articles you'll find on said topic. There may be more besides, but let's take this as a reasonable proxy of media interest. Let's assume that, for any given an event, the height of news coverage occurs the day after the event. The march was on Oct. 10th, so we would expect "peak news" to be on Oct. 11th. I adjusted your search to focus only on Oct. 11th, and Google News's Explore in depth showed me there were 1,076 more articles about the topic. It's true: not altogether absent. To the Ferguson riots. Wikipedia pins the start date on 8/9/14, so let's take peak news date as 8/10/14. (However, given this was a multi-day narrative, we know that news coverage did not end after 8/10/14, but continued.) How many Explore In Depth articles does Google News tell me were available for search term Ferguson riots on 8/10/14? 13,445. The evidence is overwhelming: the media is far more interested in the riot narrative than in the peaceful march narrative.

Kalium 11y ago

It sure raised my consciousness. Clear into what they didn't want. It should be noted that studies of the subject show that riots tend to make voters in areas that hosted riots more conservative.

marcusgarvey 11y ago
It should be noted that, for millennia, violence and destruction are considered perfectly acceptable means for accomplishing political objectives. But only when performed by state actors, of course. IMO: the riots start out as protests. Then a minority of people choose to cause mayhem. Another minority are criminals and they do what criminals do, which is act opportunistically. And yes, agents provocateur do exist. But sure, I can understand why people who are directly affected would prefer to have no protests at all out of fear that a riot might happen. They love order more than justice, an attitude which, ironically, has helped to create the very same conditions that people are protesting.
- Kalium 11y ago
  It's much easier for people to be principled when their self-interest is not at stake. I'm not opposed to peaceful protests. I've been in some myself. I am very much against riots and romanticizing riots as a form of productive protest. Agent provocateurs do exist, but I think it's unreasonable to pretend (as some do) that all riots are due to such.
  - marcusgarvey 11y ago
    >It's much easier for people to be principled when their self-interest is not at stake. You are certainly right about that.

anigbrowl 11y ago

That's BS. The entire event was televised on C-Span, it was covered on every nightly news program (in California anyway) and got plenty of (mostly positive) newspaper coverage as well: https://www.google.com/search?q=washington+march+farrakhan&oq=washington+march+farrakhan&aqs=chrome..69i57.4319j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=0&ie=UTF-8#q=washington+march+farrakhan&safe=off&tbm=nws https://www.google.com/search?q=washington+march+farrakhan&o... I apologize for making a generalization, but whenever I see anyone of any political alignment suggesting that their issue of choice is being ignored/suppressed the mainstream media, the claim is almost invariably without merit.

marcusgarvey 11y ago
Well, let's just take a closer look at Google News, shall we? Google News has a handy feature: when you search for a topic, under the first result is an option to explore in depth, and it shows you the number of additional articles you'll find on said topic. There may be more besides, but let's take this as a reasonable proxy of media interest. Let's assume that, for any given an event, the height of news coverage occurs the day after the event. The march was on Oct. 10th, so we would expect "peak news" to be on Oct. 11th. I adjusted your search to focus only on Oct. 11th, and Google News's Explore in depth showed me there were 1,076 more articles about the topic. It's true: not altogether absent. To the Ferguson riots. Wikipedia pins the start date on 8/9/14, so let's take peak news date as 8/10/14. (However, given this was a multi-day narrative, we know that news coverage did not end after 8/10/14, but continued.) How many Explore In Depth articles does Google News tell me were available for search term Ferguson riots on 8/10/14? 13,445. The evidence is overwhelming: the media is far more interested in the riot narrative than in the peaceful march narrative.