These are two articles showing the effects of the Katrina hurricane. The AFP article says that a white man and light skinned woman found food. The AP article says that a young black man looted food. Do you think that AP is a racist media? Do you think that if the woman was darker or the white guy was black that AFP would have said looting instead of finding? Could it possible be that AP said looting based on the black man's age? Why do you think one said looting while the other one said finding?
Monday, January 16, 2012
Katrina Picture
These are two articles showing the effects of the Katrina hurricane. The AFP article says that a white man and light skinned woman found food. The AP article says that a young black man looted food. Do you think that AP is a racist media? Do you think that if the woman was darker or the white guy was black that AFP would have said looting instead of finding? Could it possible be that AP said looting based on the black man's age? Why do you think one said looting while the other one said finding?
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I dont believe that the AP is a racist media; however, it is possible that there are some racial undertones in the picture. I do believe that if the guy and the woman were black, the caption would have said "looting" simply because this isnt an isolated incident. I've read news reports about how negative the media has portrayed african american victimized by Katrina.
ReplyDeleteI think in order to answer these questions, we need to know whether these people were interviewed. If they were interviewed then I don't see any signs of racism. In the article, it is stated that both were coming out of a grocery store, but only the black man was accused of stealing. By comparing these articles, it seems racist. But looking at each article separately, I see no signs of racism.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that the AP is a racist media either but I feel that they should have used a different word than "looting" because it seems like they misused the word. Looting usually means taking items of luxury or that aren't necessary for survival. In the article with the black man they do not say exactly what he takes like they do in the article with the light skinned man and woman but they do say he "looted a grocery store", but most of the items in a grocery store are food which is definitely something that is necessary for survival. There is a chance he may have taken something he didn't need from the store but the article does not give us enough information to know if he was looting or simply scavenging for food.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the above comment. I also think that the importance of the rest of the content of this article is evident to answer the questionable racism. During the time that these incidents were happening, stories were often found on the news of people "looting" from grocery stores, often people that the news reporters interviewed. Because of the interviews, the reporters knew when and where the incidents were taking place and perhaps the young man on the top picture was doing it along with the people that were interviewed. Hurricane Katrina hit a wide spread of people and places and we don't know where or when the two separate stories took place. This all shows the importance of context when reading a passage of an article because without the research its hard to make an assumption or conclusion.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe that the Associated Press is racist, I believe that the AFP used the wrong word. It is hard to say without the knowing the context of the stories, but if the people "found" bread at a store then that is the same thing as "looting". I don't think that there is any intention of racism in either of these articles. However, it is impossible to analyze this without the context as the articles could be completely factual or just have an error in wording. It is true that some media outlets have portrayed African-Americans affected by Hurricane Katrina in a negative light, but I don't think either of these articles are examples of this. Also, it is interesting to note that neither article indicates the subjects ethnicity, this may indicate their objectiveness in reporting.
ReplyDeleteI would not go as far as to say the media is racist, but it definitely seems to have some racial undertones here. In both situations, the survivors obtained food and other items from a presumably abandoned grocery store, yet when it is the black man it is called looting, but when it is the white couple, it is called "finding." The word looting, definitely carries the undertones of stealing, raiding, robbery, crime, etc, while the word "find" is much more innocent and vague. This would imply that the media automatically assumes that the black man is a thieving criminal, while the white couple simply "found" items to survive. I don't know that one could make a trend from this, but the isolated incident definitely seems rather impartial.
ReplyDeleteI don’t see any racism in the picture. Actually, the three people were doing the same thing. The flood left them no choice but to take grocery in order to survive the disaster. It’s just the problem of the authors’ choosing a word how to describe it. Maybe there could be an explanation: the young man carried a huge plastic bag, in which there must be lots of grocery, while the two white man and woman only had a small bag of grocery. The author of AP may think the black man took too much more than he needed and so used the word ”loot”.
ReplyDeleteI believe that just because the article noted it as looting, that its not considered racist. Just because the author might have a racial biast doesn't mean that the whole site is racist. For all that we know it could have been a freelance journalist who has nothing to do with the source itself. Another point is the fact that the two articles came from diffrent sources to site with. Maybe if AP had the same picture as AFP they would still call it looting. Saying that AP is racist is the generalization that we have been taught for the last 2 weeks to avoid.
ReplyDeleteI would not think that using "looting" instead of "finding" for the African-American is a way to show racism. AP is a media and it reports stories and news. For medias, using the same word in two similar news would be boring and would not be appropriate and also shows the lack of variety of words that it has.
ReplyDeleteWow.... That is unbelievable... How can also media be racist? I have learned that all people have a right to be equal since I was young. The media has to be fair to all races, such as African American, Asian, white, and every races. And also media strongly influences on public. That is why they have to write article carefully. Although all people maybe be racist, media shoudn't be racist.
ReplyDeleteTo refer that the media, AP reports an racial article that is targeted to an African American may be a exaggeration. However, it is obviously true that the article does express the feeling of racism; for instance, the media does not know the man's situation at that moment whether he is actually looting or finding goods for his safety purpose. At this point, the word, "looting" implicits that the media discriminates the African American.
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