Week 6: Response to "What's a looter? In Storm's Aftermath, Pictures Kick Up a Different Kind of Tempest"

Response to "What's a looter? In Storm's Aftermath, Pictures Kick Up a Different Kind of Tempest"
Question #2

The controversy that surrounded the definitions underneath these two photos from Hurricane Katrina goes very deep into the American psyche and our perceptions of people and their actions. While this situation obviously turns out to be a reasonable difference in definition that was clearly laid out beforehand and adhered to, people have a distinct distrust and distaste for the media and take issue with seeminginconsistencies like this one. Race is a hot topic in American society today as well and the stark contrast of a black person and a white person who seem to be engaged in the same behaviour; looting, but labeled differently sparks up that topic. By seeing this photo without anyback story , one might be led to believe that if two people are doing the same thing, but one is black and the other white, they could be labeleddifferently , and treated differently because of it. This does happen, and while these photos seem to have an innocent back story that absolves them of any wrongdoing the photos and captions side by side highlight what many people think, that the media has some racisttendencies.
The fact is that these two photos are from different photographers, who work for different agencies who had allot on their plates at this time. They were writing their own captions and realistically probably didn't give this one too much thought. If this was one photographers work that was side by side with captions that differed so severely like this then it would become a whole different issue and topic.