Martial Law and T-P Crime Porn

G Bitch looks into the numbers behind yesterday's T-P headline.

A huge rise in misdemeanor arrests sounds like the police up to their usual--harassing and dragging away anyone who "looks" like a criminal, especially having dark skin, being male, wearing a big white t-shirt and/or baggy pants, standing on or near a corner, especially in Central City.

Yesterday I started off on an incoherent bit about how the T-P seems to be slanting coverage more and more toward sensationlist stories like the mercy killings case as well as sinking back into the tried and true "if it bleeds it leads" school of lazy journalism that we had come to expect from them pre-K.

Crime porn journalism works upon New Orleans in much the same way that War on Terror rhetoric affects the national political scene. It exploits the Culture of Fear in such a way as to drown out any movement for constructive change in the wake of catastrophe. I expect much more of this from the T-P in the coming months.