Empower Wisconsin | Oct. 21, 2020

What’s next, a “peaceful riot?” 

The Associated Press, which likes to think of itself as the “definitive source of independent journalism,” is now advising against reporters using the term “riot” when describing, well, a riot. 

Instead, the AP counsels substituting something like “violent demonstration.” 

“Use care in deciding which term best applies: A riot is a wild or violent disturbance of the peace involving a group of people. The term riot suggests uncontrolled chaos and pandemonium,” notes the AP Stylebook, the writing guideline bible of mainstream journalists. 

So, would the looting and the physical attacks on police and the burning of private properties in Kenosha for instance, constitute a riot, according to AP’s more nuanced definition? 

Well, now, that term could hurt feelings, the Lords and Mistresses of AP assert.  

“Focusing on rioting and property destruction rather than underlying grievance has been used in the past to stigmatize broad swaths of people protesting against lynching, police brutality or for racial justice, going back to the urban uprisings of the 1960s,” AP wrote. 

Of course, the business owners that have watched their stores burned to the ground or their merchandise stolen or community members fearing the violence of a mob might have a grievance with the “demonstrators’” acts of destruction.  

AP’s latest stupid style recommendations should come as no surprise from journalists who have been loathe to describe the violence from radical leftists in the wake of the officer-involved killing of George Floyd as anything but “peaceful” protests. 

It’s all more Newspeak in the new Woke world the left and their public-relations pals in the mainstream media are trying to create.