AP: Say, Are The Media Encouraging The Riots With Our Coverage?

Tony Branco

Hot Air  "If it bleeds, it leads — and these riots have plenty of bleeding to report. The Associated Press does some navel-gazing today about the coverage of the protests and unrest following the George Floyd homicide in Minneapolis, and raises a few uncomfortable questions. Has the national media’s focus on violence crowded out attention on legitimate protests? Is cable news fueling a cycle of violence by essentially glorifying it in prime time?

. . . Rev. Al Sharpton worried,  . . . "What’s happening in the cities need to be covered, but not at the expense of losing Floyd, he said." . . .

. . . "If anyone’s to blame for “losing Floyd,” it’s the agitators who have hijacked the controversy for their own political ends. Add in the looters who are exploiting the chaos to pillage their own communities, and we have plenty of people to hold responsible for the distraction. The media’s coverage might incentivize some of this, too, but the solution for that would be to choose to deliberately refuse to inform the public by crafting a more desirable narrative.

"We already have too much of that from the media, Andrew Malcolm wrote earlier today: . . ."

Tony Branco