How much did the media help the riots spread?

Strangely enough its keeping Rupert Murdoch out of the news!

I agreen Oxon70 Perhaps the media should be done for 'Incitement to Riot'. Had there been a media visual blackout and just a spoken report then I am sure things would have remained relatively calm.

I think you're right there' ElseG. As some people depend on 'visuals' to learn about things, then actual listening may not have been so interesting to them. Information and pictures would obviously been carried by Facebook etc, but not with the same 'in your face' dramatic impact.

But I also feel the media are now completely irresponsible about so much that's happening. This "rift" between police and politicians seems to have started and been promoted by the media with scant regard for A. the truth and B. the damage it could do.

When I watch news programmes now I feel I am seeing mostly comment with very little unbiased new reporting.

N1Granny, agree about unbiased news reporting, or rather the lack of it. Traditionally I have watched an listened to BBC news, but now I feel I can't trust them not to slant it whichever way they are leaning. I now watch Channel Four News, which is informative, relatively unbiased and which treats us as grown ups with minds of our own

I must try this. But it will have adverts.

I worry about all the visual reporting. What will those who can't read and don't understand the descriptions - and I'm talking about preschool children now - make of what everyone else was glued to last week?

I think they will be thinking....'This is what people do'....
Unless their parents have the nous to say it is bad. The voiceovers didn't say anything as simple...

This is actually a hobbyhorse of mine, all the time I see reporting, and if it's about ASBOS they always show kids on top of a car, or smashing a car window, and i think of the little kids knowing 'People can do this', when we wouldn't have even imagined it.

I think the media's portrayal of the London riots definitely opened the doorways for Birmingham and Manchester. It still shocks me to this day how cruel these kids / faces of the future can be. Serial opportunists with no recollection for their actions. Its disgusting. However, I'm not sure if the media can be blamed as an excuse for these stupid childrens actions - I feel if they were parented properly they wouldnt need to jump just because of an opportunity.

Slightly off the point – we all keep talking about kids and children and there is no doubt that a horrifying number of young people took part in this shocking behaviour. I understand that a sixteen-year-old has been arrested for the murder of that poor man in Ealing. However, the majority of those arrested, in London at least, are adults.

Yes, slightly off the point, but if most are adults, why are the government going on about teenage gangs?

I've just been alerted by 'Private Eye' to the fact that there was a similar riot in Hornsey....in March this year.
You never heard of it? Neither did I. I checked it out. It was reported in the Tottenham and Wood Green Journal of March 17th 2011, and not even the Evening Standard took it up. Why?

All the media were covering the Japanese tsunami.
And it didn't therefore spread copycat violence across the country.