During the day, the sidewalks of Ferguson, Missouri, have grown crowded with journalists. At night, the media sometimes appear to outnumber protestors near police lines.
As reporters from around the world descend on the small town, the inevitable question has emerged -- is the media becoming too big a part of the very story it is covering?
It is a particularly salient inquiry as stunning photos and videos emerging from Ferguson have helped to ignite debates about police brutality, the militarization of local authorities and a range of issues concerning race, class and the U.S. justice system.
[seealso slug=http://sale-online.click/2014/08/14/joe-scarborough-ferguson-wesley-lowrey/%5D%3C/p%3E%3Cp%3EThe media has loomed large in the story in Ferguson from the early days of the protests. As David Carr of The New York Times pointed out in his column on Ferguson, much of the coverage seemed to ramp up after the arrests of Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery and Huffington Post reporter Ryan Reilly. The use of tear gas on an Al Jazeera America news crew also drew attention that the police had begun to indiscriminately target bystanders.
Since then, journalists have piled into Ferguson. Some have already noticed just how many cameras had lined up alongside protestors and police.
The media to protester ratio is now 3:1 in this #Ferguson live stream. http://t.co/pF03IADiU6 http://t.co/HmpFReBl1i— Jeremy Zilar (@jeremyzilar) August 19, 2014
Last night in #Ferguson the ratio of police to media to protestors was about 5:2:1 where it was more a media circus than anything else.— Jason A. Samfield (@JasonSamfield) August 19, 2014
Mashable made the decision to send down two reporters to cover the unrest. One of them, Director of News video Ashley Codianni, has felt first-hand the pull of wanting to cover the story with the push of realizing how much media is already there.
"The press is a third player in this situation that is not helping," she said.
"At one point, the ratio of reporters to protestors was so minimal that you almost wondered if we were creating more hysteria," she said. "Three protestors would do something, they would raise their hands or throw a water bottle and the entire press scrum would run into the street to try to capture that moment."
Codianni also noted that on Monday night, a protestor pleaded with the media not to do anything to escalate the situation.
One protester is calmly yelling in loud speaker, "media, relax."— Ashley Codianni (@AshleyCodianni) August 19, 2014
Blowback from the media's coverage began to build on Tuesday morning after media analyst Noah Rothman published a post detailing that "the press is no longer serving as objective chroniclers of the proceedings."
"In many ways, the media appears to believe that it is an active participant in the events in Missouri. What’s more, the press appears to be relishing this role," he wrote.
The Washington Post's Dylan Byers aggregated the post, and the debate began.
Byers took some flak for his post, particularly from The Intercept's editor in chief John Cook.
@DylanByers if u ever provoke someone simply by your presence to shoot a high-velocity projectile at u while yr hands r raised I'll ask same— John Cook (@johnjcook) August 19, 2014
A tweet from New York Magazine columnist Annie Lowrey took the other side of the debate, arguing that more coverage is better than less.
I'll take "some reporters becoming part of the story" over "too few reporters covering an important social-justice issue" any day.— Annie Lowrey (@AnnieLowrey) August 19, 2014
The town's residents may also be getting tired of the media's involvement. Codianni said that multiple people had come by the media staging area, telling journalists to go home. Protesters also hurled rocks at MSNBC's Chris Hayes.
Fox News reporter Steve Harrigan was confronted by a protestor after calling the evening's unrest "child's play."
Other journalists have also noted that local residents understand the positive impact that the media have had.
Heartbreaking. Desperate residents of #Ferguson begging media not to leave. To stay, to witness, to tell the world. pic.twitter.com/R0Ks4zt2Ar— Zeynep Tufekci (@zeynep) August 19, 2014
At this point, there is no risk of under-covering the situation. Photos out of Ferguson have been the lead of websites, newspapers and television coverage for days. For better or worse, Ferguson coverage is unlikely to wane in the coming days.
Asking questions about media coverage is not about blame. There is no one journalist to point to as an example of what not to do. Most if not all journalists seem to be abiding by police requests and attempting to do their job. The risk is when the good intentions of individual journalists end up collectively amping up the situation.
Tuesday night, with a noticeable media presence, authorities arrested 78 people, the most in one night since the unrest began. Correlation does not equal causation, but the media's own paranoia about its role in this situation is a healthy one.