Looting, finding, and blogging

[substitute]

Much is being made of the "looting" versus "finding" picture captions on Yahoo! and the implied racism of the black people looting and the white people finding. I don't think it warrants the blogerati outrage it's generating.

It should be pointed out that the "looting" caption is from the Associated Press and the "finding" one is from Agence France-Presse. So not only did two different editorial staffs issue those captions, but one of them is a translation from French. If Yahoo! actually put these right next to each other that was at best not managing an automated setup and at worst a shoddy piece of layout.

Maybe there's other bad coverage like this, but comparing those two particular captions isn't going to be fruitful.

I do think that showing America's {white|black|blue|orange} underclass looting after a spectacular natural disaster is unhelpful and a form of fear porn for the middle class watching their TVs. Look what happens when disaster strikes! All those tweaker skinheads, gangbangers, and welfare moms will come to your house and take your widescreen TV! Dogs and cats, living together. PANIC GODDAMN YOU!

During the L.A. Riots there was a shitload of looting which was pretty much done by everyone who felt like it. Friends of mine living in a lower middle class part of South L.A. had their neighbors ring the doorbell and say "We're going to the mall to loot. Wanna come?" and college kids busted into the Ralphs to get the good liquor, while at the same time people in South L.A. were looting bottled water and diapers because everything was going to be shut the fuck down for a week. My friend Rhonda saw a woman loot one shoe from a Payless near her house on Crenshaw. She said "Woman, what in the world are you doing to do with one shoe?" and the lady just flipped her off and got in her car.

During the Blitz in London, a time that we're supposed to remember as Brave Little England bearing up with grace under bombs, it was common for thieves to go into theatres and similar places after the alerts had gone off to find purses and valuables that had been dropped in the panic to get to the shelters.

Cyril Connolly wrote of this phenomenon: "Perfect fear driveth out love".

Comments

[vertamae.livejournal.com]

You know, I deleted my post with the photo montage in question, and I commented in throwingstardna's journal to relay the info you posted here, the poor English translation of the French, etc., which prompted him to post a Correction in his journal, along with comments disabled (he has some two thousand people listing his journal here on LJ), but now I'm trying to find the proof that the AFP photo caption is an English translation, and inaccurate at that, and how is that done?

This is the link to the photo (http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/photo/050830/photos_ts_wl_afp/050830005457_uv6f37by_photo0&g=events/ts/080304tropicalweathe;_ylt=Asl.Ros8TxMQLEmOcdSh3vaGOrgF;_ylu=X3oDMTA3bGk2OHYzBHNlYwN0bXA-)

This is the link to the photo with story accompanying (http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050830/ts_afp/usweather_050830005457)

In the interest of accurate reporting, since you prompted me to delete, and I prompted a very popular blogger to print a correction, how do we determine this was a direct translation? Are we to assume the photo was taken by a French photojournalist in New Orleans? Or was the photo transferred by wire to the AFP, who later posted it to their web site, and printed a caption, which Yahoo! then translated? I'm starting to doubt the inaccuracy.

[substitute.livejournal.com]

Whether it was translated or not, it's still two DIFFERENT news agencies using different words. It's not one news agency using "looting" only for black people.

I made the assumption that the caption writer's first language was not English because the photo came through AFP. Even if that assumption is incorrect we still don't have the case of one editorial staff choosing "finding" for white people and "looting" for black people.

I can't see how two different photo captions from two different agencies about two different photos can be conflated into "the media is being racist" just because both photos were syndicated onto one online news site. The translation possibility is just extra.

[vertamae.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I think you fed further misinformation. Your assumption is merely that, not fact, and it was my mistake to trust you knew what you were writing about. :)

Regardless of who used the word 'looting' and who used the word 'finding', for anyone to label what a black person is doing as looting and for anyone else to label two white people doing the same as merely 'finding' is indeed racism. I'm not sure how you're not seeing that. I feel bad that I prompted the guy to print a correction based on more misinformation. But I'll get over it.

[substitute.livejournal.com]

I still disagree and you're not seeing my point.

for anyone to label what a black person is doing as looting and for anyone else to label two white people doing the same as merely 'finding' is indeed racism

That makes no sense. Two different people using two different words for two different events, and it's racist? How?

If you can't think logically, don't accuse me of misinforming. It's insulting and unwarranted.

If you can find this mysterious racist who made sure that two different photos on Yahoo!, unconnected, from two different news servicefs, somehow got "looting" for the black guy and "finding" for the white guy, let me know. Otherwise no one has proved any such thing.

If you just want to enjoy the angry liberal meme du jour, then carry on. You're just choosing which assumption to follow and not thinking critically anyway.

[vertamae.livejournal.com]

I'm just trying to get to the bottom of it. It is entirely possible that one person re-writes captions for the Yahoo! site. Maybe there is a small staff. Maybe the AP writes the captions over the AFP photos they receive. Clearly some info was added to the original caption. I'm not going to make assumptions either way, just curious.

If you just want to enjoy the angry liberal meme du jour, then carry on.

I'm not into those kinds of labels, I read all types of journals.

[mendel.livejournal.com]

What difference does any of that make? Whether it was an AFP translation, or a Yahoo! translation plus a cut-and-paste of an AP caption, or the AFP Washington bureau and the AP Washington bureau, or two Yahoo-written captions to otherwise uncaptioned photos, it's speculation pretending to be reporting. If they want to break a story rather than attract attention and page views, it's two phone calls to each agency's office to find out whether they wrote the caption in question.

You can even approximate that sort of research by looking at more images on Yahoo! News. I searched for floodwaters and looting and found the same stock phrase, "Rescuers struggled to reach stranded survivors of Hurricane Katrina as floodwaters and looting wreaked further havoc along the US Gulf coast with hundreds feared dead", on a couple dozen AFP photo captions and zero other news agencies' captions -- so either Yahoo is running AFP-provided captions, or there's one person who is captioning AFP photos at Yahoo but not captioning any other agencies' photos. Similarly, you can see that AP and only AP caption images with a comment about how waters continue to rise.

So there's some evidence that the captions came from different sources, whatever those sources were, with ten minutes' online research, and I'm not even someone carrying the story. Imagine what checking sources could accomplish!

No-one's claiming that the wording difference doesn't reflect some sort of institutionalized racism or classism (there are "looters" photos with Hispanic people, too, and very few photos of white people with supplies at all); the problem is that it's presented as evidence of some sort of racism without any investigation as to how photos get captioned at Yahoo. That's journalistic laziness and sensationalism, and it discredits bloggers' claims of being the next wave of journalists.

[vertamae.livejournal.com]

This is the original photo caption:

Two residents wade through chest-deep water

The rest was added, by someone who clearly does not view white people taking food as looters.

http://www.afp.com/russian/news/stories/050830005457.uv6f37by.html

[substitute.livejournal.com]

The rest was added, by someone who clearly does not view white people taking food as looters.

That makes no sense. Captions have a short and long version, almost always. Captions get changed, too; do you have a timestamp that proves the caption had the "finding" word added?

And if the "finding" word was added, how does that prove that the completely different news organization that used the word "looting" had anything at all to do with the difference in captions between this photo and the one of the black guy?

There is exactly one way in which this discrepancy could have been deliberately racist, and that's if some editor at Yahoo! went through all pictures of people taking stuff during the disaster and carefully changed all white people to "finding" and all black people to "looting".

Otherwise it's just an assumption because two photos with different captions were shoveled onto one web site.

[vertamae.livejournal.com]

Mon Aug 29, 8:54 PM ET is the time on the Yahoo! page.

30/08/2005 00h54 is the time on the Russian AFP page. I'm not sure the time difference between Russia and ET, and really I am not looking to prove this to you, or try to express my own opinions to you - we do not think at all alike - this is for my own benefit. I only feel badly that I caused someone to print a correction in his journal based on possibly false information. That's my real point. But that's my issue, not yours.

[substitute.livejournal.com]

You're right that we don't think alike.

Please just stop telling me I don't know what I'm talking about and leave me alone. This is making me tired.

[vertamae.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'll follow suit and remove you too. I enjoyed a lot of your posts, and I wish you well with your treatments and such. Good luck to you. :)

[halfjack.livejournal.com]

The bottom line is that blogs are not news sources, so what you choose to do with information you find on blogs should be tempered by the fact that there are no guarantees offered or implied, no one checking facts, no staff of editors, no lawyers, and no interest in what you take away from them. Getting cranky about making a choice based on a blog seems about on par with getting upset over having your paper failed because you used wikipedia as a primary source.

[vertamae.livejournal.com]

Nah, I wasn't cranky at all, just trying to find the facts. Thanks though.