Finding vs. Looting

[kingrat]

Before y'all get your panties in a twist over the "finding" by whites vs. the "looting" by blacks... oh wait, you did get your panties in a twist. Too late. Anyway, it's usually best to get the facts before jumping to conclusions.

So this item at the Romanesko blog at Poynter actually pulls in the comments of the person who wrote the caption for the "finding" photo. Guess what? According to that information, groceries were floating around the street where that photo was taken. Hmmmm, maybe it wasn't a racist caption after all? I don't know for certain, as the information I have is still he said she said. The caption writer could have just made it up to cover up a major faux pas.

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45&aid=88106

The point being, practice skepticism.

Comments

[wingedelf.livejournal.com]

A few other points which shold be noted:
1) The photo with the white folks and the one with the black guy came from two different wire services, and aren't connected. Agence France-Presse did the first one, AP the second. If the captions were written by the same person for the same service, there might be some room for getting one's knickers in a twist.
2) The white people are pictured with food. The black guy has a 12-pack of diet Pepsi, and is dragging a huge black bag full of something else unidentifiable. In emergency situations, most folk will resort to whatever to feed themselves. It may be that the black guy has just food as well in his, but it's not possible to say for certain, and it appears as if there are several rectangular things with hard edges jutting out which in comparison to his body size look larger than jumbo boxes of cereal (which is the biggest grocery item which springs to mind which comes in boxes). It crosses the boundaries from self-preservation to looting, i think, when there's the element of profit involved.

[wingedelf.livejournal.com]

Damn. I should learn to proofread myself. Which which is which?

[euterpe35.livejournal.com]

true, we don't know what's in the black guy's bag..
but "The black guy has a 12-pack of diet Pepsi"... well... there's just no availabe drinking water. Could be all the bottled water was already taken. Liquid is liquid when you're thirsty...

[wingedelf.livejournal.com]

Oh, definitely. Food and water are fine. What I was saying is "You can't say that all he has is food, whereas it's fairly clear that the other people don't have non-food items.