Tuesday’s edition of PBS NewsHour featured a discussion about “the differences in the experiences of black journalists as contrasted with their colleagues.” One of the guests, Los Angeles Times Executive Editor Norman Pearlstine, talked about how “one of the active debates we had over the past week was about the use of the word ‘looting’ to describe the destruction of the property” that has taken place at several riots that have occurred in the wake of the death of George Floyd. Pearlstine went on to talk about how the seemingly innocent term is actually profoundly racist.
According to Pearlstine, “the feeling among the black journalists at The Los Angeles Times, who frankly educated the rest of us that 'looting' had a pejorative, racist connotation, and that comparing it to the kind of behavior of the police and the kind of behavior that we witnessed really was a false equivalency and yet it was one that we were making as journalists if you picked...up a copy of our paper.”
Dorothy Tucker, the President of the National Association of Black Journalists, argued that the term “riot” was also racist.
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