Feral Beast: Vancouver riot couple kiss and tell

Monday, June 20, 2011

Vancouver riot couple kiss and tell

After all the chaotic images that emerged from the Vancouver Game 7 [Stanley Cup] riots last week — burning, looting, fighting — one image instantly became iconic: Scott Jones kissing his girlfriend Alex Thomas, as riot police marched down a debris-covered road.
Jones, a bartender from Australia, reached down to comfort Canadian college student Thomas after police knocked her to the ground following Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final between the Boston Bruins and the Vancouver Canucks. Richard Lam, a news photographer on the scene, snapped the photo that became an instant sensation around the globe...Lam, the photographer, said he wasn't aware he had captured the image, as he was being pushed away by police at the time.
But he did, and his photograph remains a beacon of compassion in the middle of such abject malice.

Hat tip to Greg Wyshynski , who linked to the NBC clip on "The Today Show" on Monday.

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Feral Beast? Try Lemming

If the press were an animal, what kind of animal would it be? I’ve got my answer. A legion of lemmings, furry and well-intentioned, but ultimately condemned by their nature to follow each other mindlessly off a tall cliff, over the Paris Hilton peak or into the Invade Iraq crevasse. The words “feral beast” certainly wouldn’t come to mind. It’s not particularly accurate or particularly evocative. But that is how the departing British prime minister, Tony Blair, sees journalists: as malicious tormentors who have tried to tear him limb from limb.

--Gal Beckerman of the Columbia Journalism Review

“Journalism is a form of cartography,” write Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach of Pew. “It creates a map for citizens to navigate society. Inflating events for sensation, neglecting others, stereotyping or being disproportionately negative all make a less reliable map.”

"Journalism is good at solving small problems or taking small bites of a big problem. It’s not good at solving big problems." Adapted from David Simon, creator of The Wire.

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