The mainstream media has become a key partner in Donald Trump’s quest to cast the small-scale rioting in Los Angeles as an existential threat to the country.
This is happening in two ways.
- The media is focusing on the visually dramatic rioting and property damage rather than the overwhelmingly peaceful expressions of support for friends and neighbors and a widespread backlash against over-militarized and cruel immigration raids.
- The media is casting Trump’s decision to send in the National Guard and the Marines as an attempt to “quell” the rioting, when in fact it is incitement, pure and simple, intended to stoke the violence rather than abet it.
I get that No. 1 is hard to pass up on, especially for TV. But that doesn’t mean journalists shouldn’t make a greater effort to contextualize the occasional conflagrations – to report on how they are isolated events amid peaceful protests, which are themselves affecting only a tiny bit of a city that is otherwise going about its business unperturbed.
And as for No. 2, there has been some skepticism in the coverage — some notice that Trump is “escalating a confrontation” with California, and probably illegally to boot. But the headlines and the lead paragraphs don’t remotely cast Trump’s actions as the overt incitement that they are.
The message should be clear: There would have been no violence without Trump’s intentionally ordering militarized immigration sweeps in communities where they are seen as an attack. And sending National Guard troops and Marines into the mix, when they are not remotely needed, simply heightens tensions and increases the likelihood of disaster.
The Guardian, uniquely among traditional news organizations, wrote exactly the right headline: “Los Angeles responds with roaring backlash to Trump’s dramatic escalation.” Maanvi Singh made it clear where the violence originated:
Fueling the fury was the brutality with which federal agents had approached their targets…
As masked immigration officers ripped workers away from their jobs, other agents in riot gear attacked protesters with teargas and flash-bang grenades, escalating a handful of isolated demonstrations into a clash that roiled the city and spurred several hundred to join the protest.
By contrast, Politico highlighted “masked protesters pelting police with rocks, setting fire to cars and waving Mexican flags on abandoned freeways” and blithely cast it as “The LA standoff Trump wanted” — quoting one “gleeful” Trump acolyte saying “We couldn’t script this any better.”
A New York Times news analysis headlined “Trump Jumps at the Chance for a Confrontation in California Over Immigration” waited until the 18th paragraph to provide the essential context – and even then only from a critic: Senator Alex Padilla of California, a Democrat.
“They create a crisis of their own making and come in with all the theatrics and cruelty of immigration enforcement,” Padilla told the Times. “They should not be surprised in a community like Los Angeles they will be met by demonstrators who are very passionate about standing up for fundamental rights and due process.”
Here’s more of the essential context missing from most of the coverage — from Georgia Democrat Stacy Abrams, in her newsletter post headlined “When Protest Becomes a Pretext for Militarism”:
What we are witnessing in Los Angeles is a dangerous and deliberate escalation—one we’ve seen in authoritarian regimes, not in democracies. When dissent is met with armed force, when peaceful protest is pushed into chaos, and when the military is used to silence communities rather than serve them, we’re no longer debating policy. We’re facing tyranny at our doorstep. The steps are clear: identify a target that you can demonize, strip away protections and then use their understandable panic to justify over-reaction and the erosion of rights.
Despite the propaganda about law and order, the protests in Los Angeles are about ICE raids that have torn families apart and terrorized communities. They have been overwhelmingly peaceful. California’s governor and Los Angeles’s mayor have both said they have the resources to manage isolated incidents. But Trump doesn’t want calm. He wants conflict—because he thinks fear keeps him in power.
American Prospect editor David Dayen scolded mainstream reporters:
These protests, which have been abbreviated in the media as “unrest,” were actually a cry of hope, and a reminder of the human need for community, the need to turn to each other to find something to believe in.…
But the infinitesimally small number of acts tarring the proceedings with a dubious tag of violence cannot compete with the core reasons why people are in the streets. Thousands are willing to rise up against the snatching of their family and friends and neighbors. Thousands more are likely to join them in the coming days.
Joy-Ann Reid explained in her newsletter that “there is no crisis in Los Angeles that ICE didn’t cause”.
Bottom line: do not buy the mainstream media and regime narrative that Los Angeles is in the midst of a conflagration that could in any way necessitate federal military intervention. What is happening in the vast majority of this city, as my The Joy Reid Show team and I have personally observed, is absolute normality — well, normality in the L.A. sense.
There are signs here and there that our top journalists are getting closer to casting Trump’s incitement as what it is.
The Washington Post this morning published a strong story about the view from LA, headlined “‘He’s waging a war on us’: As Trump escalates, Angelenos defend their city.” (It was, however, on page A6.)
And the Times and the Post both published stories in recent days on Trump’s unprecedented seizing of authority: “Trump Declares Dubious Emergencies to Amass Power, Scholars Say” and “For Trump, seizing emergency powers has become central to governing.”
But what remains lacking in the daily lead stories about incremental events is a full-throated acknowledgement, in the institutional voice, that Trump is fueling the fires he claims to be putting out.
The next time Trump sends more troops into Los Angeles — or orders a new round of immigration raids in blue states, or deports immigrants without due process to third countries — the headlines and the lead paragraphs should make it clear that he is exceeding his powers purely for personal and political gain, that he is taking one step closer to tyranny, and that he is creating crises, not controlling them.