London riots news coverage

London riots news coverage

In the interview above reporters interview middle aged historian David Starkey about his views on the youth who were involved in the riots. In terms of imagery seen during the interview the back drop of the studio features sensationalised and violent pictures such as buildings burning, windows cracked and debris which represents the riots as a very destructive event. In fat to some extent since the images shown are very erratic and omit images of areas which were less hit than others thus exaggerating the destruction caused by the riots and in turn representing it more as some sort of civil war between the youth and authorities.

According to Starkey the reason behind the riots it the spread of "black gang culture" among youths. Such a statement represent youths especially thoses of African decent as synonymous with crime however other speakers during this interview have disagreed with Starkey's comments stating that his generaliastion is very offense.

When thinking about the possible bias of the interview, one has to consider the context of the broadcast i.e the BBC which are funded by the public's money out of the TV license but not only this has to follow a remit for the public to produce "fair, balanced and impartial coverage" of news stories therefore it there should be little bias presented in this discussion. However when thinking in the context that this is a discussion there will be a sense of bias based on each of the speakers upbringing and vie

In this extract although the youth aren't specifically present in the discussion they are given a voice through 3 speakers stating that the riots wasn't based on race or "rap music" and disagreeing with Starkey's comments however since there are no youths present we the audience hear not of there stories and thus their so called voices may be misinterpreted or in fact the full message hasn't been heard.




In the video above Reporters interview a younger demographic to get there view of the riots. Images and visuals shown here show the aftermath of the event  however when looking at the framing of the shots we see many close ups of the destruction to place emphasis on the damage the riots has caused on tottenham, although not as sensationalised as the previous imagery in the other text the use of close ups omit areas which may have been less hit than others and presents the violence and damage as that belonging to something of  a bombing.

When thinking about a sense of bias in the interview, the interviewer talks to two groups one of a much older demographic and the younger demographic to understand the voice of the youths. In the video the youths believed what happened was justified and believed that this was the governments fault. In addition the much older interviewer believes that the riots weren't caused by just plainly gang culture but rather people feeling marginalised.