Investigative Group

Here Are 31 Times The Media Pushed Narratives Downplaying Riots And Looting After George Floyd’s Death

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Andrew Kerr Investigative Reporter
Font Size:
  • Dozens of news outlets published content that either justified or explained away rioting and looting in the initial weeks of unrest following the police custody death of George Floyd in late May.
  • The Daily Caller News Foundation identified 31 articles, opinion pieces, and interviews published in the media in late May and early June that acknowledged the violence that had broken out in American cities.
  • Major news outlets such as CNN and MSNBC have recently appeared to downplay the unrest that has now gripped American cities for months.

Dozens of news outlets published content that either justified or explained away rioting and looting in the initial weeks of unrest following the police custody death of George Floyd in late May, a Daily Caller News Foundation review found.

While President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden have both condemned rioting and looting, major news outlets such as CNN and MSNBC have appeared to downplay the unrest that has gripped American cities in the months following Floyd’s death, in one instance describing a scene as “mostly peaceful” as fires raged in the background.

But as the violence broke out in American cities in late May and June, dozens of news outlets provided a platform for commentators, professors and activists who not only acknowledged that rioting and looting were taking place, but sought to either justify the violence as a valid protesting technique or as a form of righteous rebellion against an unjust system. (RELATED: Here Are Examples Of The Media Claiming The Protests Are Peaceful)

Here are 31 articles, opinion pieces, interviews and news segments published in the media in the first three weeks following Floyd’s death that pushed narratives that either justified or explained away the rioting and looting as it started to break out in American cities.

Narrative 1: Rioting is patriotic, and it works

A common narrative pushed in the media as violence broke out across the United States in late May was that rioting is a quintessentially American activity with a storied history of bringing about positive change.

Rolling Stone was among the first outlets to push the message on May 29 when it republished a story originally published in 2014 during the Ferguson riots titled “9 Historical Triumphs to Make You Rethink Property Destruction.”

The “historical pedigree of property destruction as a tactic of resistance is long and frequently effective.” argued the article, which was co-authored by Jose Martin, a known alias of a Washington, D.C. Antifa leader who currently faces multiple felony charges in connection to a mob attack against two Marines in 2018.

Like many of the articles that pushed this narrative, the Rolling Stone story cited the 1773 Boston Tea Party as proof of the positive change rioting can bring about.

“Workers had produced that tea, capitalists had risked investment on it, and it was not the colonists’ to destroy, but they said ‘fuck property rights’ and did it anyway,” the Rolling Stone article states. “Today’s conservatives don’t seem bothered by this inconvenient history, though, because think of the dress-up opportunities!”

Rolling Stone editors added a note to the story when it was republished that stated: “Protests erupted in Minneapolis, and have since spread across the country. Once again, some are criticizing the destruction of property as somehow equal — or worse — than the destruction of lives.”

On May 31, as footage rolled of looters pillaging a store in Los Angeles, CNN host Don Lemon reminded viewers that the United States was started because of the Boston Tea Party rioters.

“So do not get it twisted and think this is something that has never happened before and this is so terrible and these savages and all of that,” Lemon said. “This is how this country was started.”

Other news articles, opinion pieces and interviews published in the weeks following Floyd’s death that suggested rioting was either effective, patriotic or both include:

Narrative 2: Rioting and looting are valid protesting tactics against police brutality.

Many articles that addressed rioting in the aftermath of Floyd’s referenced Martin Luther King Jr’s famous 1967 speech in which the civil rights icon said, “a riot is the language of the unheard.” King in that same speech also called rioting “socially destructive and self-defeating” and pledged to “continue to condemn riots, and continue to say to my brothers and sisters that this is not the way.”

Arwa Mahdawi, a columnist with The Guardian, used King’s quote to argue in a piece titled, “If violence isn’t the way to end racism in America, then what is?” that suggested violence was the only remaining option on the table to end police brutality in America.

“[King’s] speech was 53 years ago and America still isn’t listening,” Mahdawi wrote. “The uncomfortable truth is that sometimes, violence is the only answer left. We like to pretend otherwise, which is why civil rights movements are often conveniently sanitized.”

Chicago Tribune columnist and editorial board member Steve Chapman also questioned whether black people can affect change without resorting to violence in a piece titled, “If riots are not the answer, what is?

“Impossible to justify, yes,” Chapman said of the riots in late May. “Impossible to understand? Not at all. Police have participated in a quiet riot against black people for generations.”

“I find the destruction tragic, unnecessary and counterproductive,” Chapman wrote. “But if I were a black person living in Minneapolis, I might feel enough anger and despair to take part.”

“Rioting may not bring about the changes that would establish genuine equality for black Americans. But neither has anything else,” he concluded.

Other articles that suggested that rioting and looting were valid protesting techniques include:

Narrative 3: These aren’t violent riots. It’s an uprising.

A third narrative that arose in the days and weeks following Floyd’s death came in the form of articles that suggested it’s incorrect to describe violent scenes of rioting and looting as such. Other articles and commentary suggested that destroying property isn’t actually an act of violence.

Teen Vogue columnist Jenn M. Jackson said the terms “rioters” and “looters” were negative terms used to ‘delegitimize” movements in a June 11 piece titled, “Don’t Let Them Bad-Mouth Rebellion or Riots: How We Name Movements Matters.”

“These words matter,” Jackson wrote. “The negative associations of these terms have an impact on how we think about these demonstrations, just as the terms like ‘uprising’ and ‘rebellion’ offer ways to think about these protests as good trouble.”

“When marginalized people respond to injustice, it is the duty of those in power to sit down, be quiet, and listen to what they have to say without dictating the terms of whose language is acceptable,” Jackson concluded. “Whether that expression comes in the form of peacefulness, anger, rage, or violence, it’s all justified. It’s time to focus on the message instead of the medium.”

TIME published an article on June 8 titled, “‘A War of Words.’ Why Describing the George Floyd Protests as ‘Riots’ Is So Loaded,” that said the word riot “connotes meaningless violence… But it also has a racial dimension in the U.S., as a term that’s long been used (by white people) to drum up the image of black people wreaking senseless chaos in cities.”

The article quoted multiple college professors who proposed other terms such as “uprising” and “rebellion” to describe the early George Floyd protests.

Harvard associate professor Elizabeth Hinton told TIME that she prefer the term “uprising” because it “really captures the fact that the violence that emerges during these incidents isn’t meaningless, that it is a political expression, and it is communicating a certain set of demands.”

University of California, Berkeley School of Law professor john a. powell, who according to TIME does not capitalize his name because it’s a slave name, said he prefers the term “demonstration” to the term “riot.”

“Riot suggests pandemonium,” powell said. “What’s happening across the country and across the world is a call for justice, a call for police accountability, for the recognition that black lives matter too … Rioting detracts from all of that.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones said on June 2 on CBS News that while it was “disturbing” to see property destruction, “destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.”

“To use the same language to describe those two things is not moral,” Hannah-Jones said.

Other articles that suggested that it was wrong to describe scenes of rioting as such, or that property damage isn’t violence, include:

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel