Riot Journalism
How to ethically cover social unrest is a complex debate, it is also an increasingly necessary one
Bogota, Colombia — Civil unrest is often the only available tool for people without voices. From the United States, to Berlin, to India, to Moscow, popular movements arise and take to the streets for a cause. Sometimes they topple empires. More often they are stomped into the footnotes of history. They are complex, amorphous, and spontaneous: told through the eyes of thousands of independent vantage points, constantly evolving and adapting to ever-changing power dynamics and conditions.
The chaotic, complex, and ephemeral reality of a social movement is difficult to encapsulate and raises serious ethical quandaries and responsibilities for the journalists attempting to document them — especially in the information age, where misinformation has instant and global reach as well as immediate consequences.
In the theater of the street protest, how a movement is perceived is a critical factor in its success or failure. The people clamor against established power and the State survives by painting them as thugs, or treasonous foreign agents as a prelude to crushing them with force. The tactic is as old as tyranny, and has been used the world over against every large protest movement the world has ever seen.
