London Riots

BBC News Coverage shows "youths gathering around" a police car. It was just being used to block off a road and "suddenly" became the target for "this violence" - and apparently shows how "the mood of the crowd can change in a moment". We then see Andy Moore being forced out of the area and it sounds as though he has been pushed to the ground. The youths tell the reporter that he is 'too late' - perhaps showing that the young people would have liked to have been able to share their opinions and have their say before the events.

The positioning of camera in this video shows the young person to be completely alien compared to the interviewer - face covered, head covered, whereas the interviewer looks much more open and innocent in comparison.
Underneath the image, we can see the latest 'breaking news', with 1,051 people charged so far in relation to the riots.
However this is not a live report and therefore it could have easily been constructed and mediated to give off a certain message.

Darcus Howe is a writer and broadcaster that some BBC News reporters spoke to live from the scenes of one of the areas where rioting took place. He speaks passionately about the issues. He claims to have been sure that 'something was going to take place. Our political leaders had no idea. The police has no idea. But if you looked at young blacks and young whites with a discerning eye, and a careful hearing, they have been telling us and we would not listen'. He later goes on to state that Duggan had his face 'blown off', to which the reporter chastises him for making assumptions. The name of this video is London Riots (The BBC will never replay this. Send It Out), and it has over 5.5 million views on Youtube. This is another live piece. However, what is interesting is that in the three clips I have looked at, the youths have not been given a fair voice of their own. In the first, no one is interviewed and young people are made to seem brutish as the middle-class, middle-aged reporter and his camera crew are forced out of the area mainly filled with working-class young people. In the second, young people are able to talk - but the story is pre-recorded and therefore it gives Sky News the chance to mediate the clip by taking out anything that makes the men seem in anyway positive, or give their actions any real justification.
The third is a man, who was 68 years old at the time, giving his opinions. Although his opinions seem to give more reason to what the young people are doing, he is not a fair representation of the rioters because he is not a rioter.

An article from the Daily Mail shows a lot of disdain and ephebiphobia from upper-middle class, middle-aged professionals. They use a menagerie of emotive and sensationalist phrases, such as 'disgruntled youths' and 'lamentable spectacle'. One sentence in particular shows the real feelings aimed at young people - 'let's not pretend our street thugs would be doing their homework rather than on the rampage if the money had been spent on maths books' - lumping young people together as 'street thugs'. This is done through implying the 'thugs' are supposed to be doing homework. The article appears to justify itself by commenting on how other countries are feeling - looking on with 'trepidation, astonishment and... a sneer'. This article comments on 'riot-torn streets of the capital' and claims that footballer Rio Ferdinand believes the Army will be best at controlling the aforementioned 'thugs'.
They also point blame at the welfare state in one article. They list four bullet points beneath the title of the article:

• 100 suspects on disability living allowance, 60 on incapacity benefits
• 40% were on benefits on some kind
• Fewer than one in 10 rioters was in a gang
• 53% of suspects were under 21

In these bullet points, the Daily Mail succeeds in vilifying multiple groups of people. They point the blame at gang culture, point the blame at young people, point the blame at benefit claimants and those who live on disability living allowance. Oddly enough, the man writing the article does not fit into a single one of these categories. Embedded in the article are links to further stories - one of which claims that 1 in 7 of the rioters was foreign; again, pointing the blame at another social group.

They call the police 'helpless' in the face of a fire - despite the fact that it is not the job of the police to be controlling a fire in the first place.

They also demonstrate some offensive attitudes towards disabled people - they feature a CCTV image of a man stealing a TV whilst being in a wheelchair, seeming to suggest that people in wheelchairs are incapable of committing crime. 

This can be seen as helping to validate the opinions of the people who read the paper, and helps them to lay blame on a certain group of people - rather than being in a mass state of confusion over why it happened.

In contrast, articles from The Guardian seem a little less enraged and a little less emotionally charged. This article, by Nina Power, seems to be a little more sympathetic towards the root causes of the riots rather than simply trying to point the blame in hindsight.

In conclusion, it seems that there was not really a very fair representation of young people in the news during the riots. The most easy to access news stories about the riots were either heavily mediated or include people who do not fit into the social groups of the people who were taking part in the riots.

Some of the stories are incredibly subjective, especially in newspapers, where it is easy to use emotive language. The absence of moving image seems to encourage journalists to use uncommon, rich and powerful words.