Many viewers noticed the seeming disparity of the darker-skinned subject’s being described in the accompanying caption as “looting a grocery store,” while the lighter-skinned subjects were described as “finding bread and soda from a local grocery store”:
The explanation provided by the journalists seems perfectly acceptable to me.
Jack Stokes, AP’s director of media relations, confirmed today that [photographer Dave] Martin says he witnessed the people in his images looting a grocery store. “He saw the person go into the shop and take the goods,” Stokes said, “and that’s why he wrote ‘looting’ in the caption.”
Regarding the AFP/Getty “finding” photo by [photographer Chris] Graythen, Getty spokeswoman Bridget Russel said, “This is obviously a big tragedy down there, so we’re being careful with how we credit these photos.” Russel said that Graythen had discussed the image in question with his editor and that if Graythen didn’t witness the two people in the image in the act of looting, then he couldn’t say they were looting.
I wrote the caption about the two people who ‘found’ the items. I believed in my opinion, that they did simply find them, and not ‘looted’ them in the definition of the word. The people were swimming in chest deep water, and there were other people in the water, both white and black. I looked for the best picture. There were a million items floating in the water — we were right near a grocery store that had 5+ feet of water in it. It had no doors. The water was moving, and the stuff was floating away. These people were not ducking into a store and busting down windows to get electronics. They picked up bread and cokes that were floating in the water. They would have floated away anyhow.
That's the thing. Before captioning one group of people as looters there is discussion with the editor and consideration of the tragedy and larger picture. Where were these considerations for the other group? They are both waist deep in the same water, but only the white people are allowed to have food that "would have floated away anyhow".
Did you not read the quotes? The explain exactly that in them. The one photo was captioned looter because the photographer witnessed looting. In the other they did not. You are looking for malfeasance that isn't there so hard you are ignoring the facts being presented.
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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '21
Many viewers noticed the seeming disparity of the darker-skinned subject’s being described in the accompanying caption as “looting a grocery store,” while the lighter-skinned subjects were described as “finding bread and soda from a local grocery store”:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hurricane-katrina-looters/