Rioted By Akiba Solomon: Article Analysis

Over the years as citizens of a country that has the freedom of speech and freedom of the press, I’ve seen many different marches, riots, and just plain violent acts to prove a point. But looking at all that sometimes it’s hard to say if I even saw it how it actually happened. Many people hear about riots on the news and in newspapers, and those are usually very biased one way or another. After reading Akiba Solomon’s essay on rioters, it showed me how biased the media can really be and in a way racist. Through this essay it talks of a few different times white people have rioted versus a few time black people have rioted. From there it then compared how the two were presented to the world and reading it helped me to see and understand better how biased the media is. For example she talks about how people in Baltimore were rioting and in the media it said “rioters and youths are plunging the city into chaos, and drinking liquor they looted.” She then compared this moment when black youths rioted to the time when a bunch of white college student rioted and in the media it stated …show more content…
Here a photographer snapped a shot of a young black man carrying groceries and the caption says “he’s looting a grocery store”. The second photo taken was of a young white couple with a woman carrying groceries and the caption under this picture read, “After finding bread and soda from a local grocery store.” Comparing the two of these one clear fact stands out and it is the usage of words. It is biased how the picture of the black man used the word “looting”. While the picture of the white woman used the word “finding”. In a way what they did was the same thing the words used were just to make one look worse than the other. I think this example just helps people to really understand the biased use of words that make other people have biased opinions after reading a story written as these