The headline in the St. Pete Times described New Orleans as “At the Edge of Anarchy.”  The stories and images of suffering, starvation, dislocation, and violence were too gruesome to believe.  Then came the looters.
 
Some were after baby food, diapers, water, clothing, toilet paper.  Others boosted television sets, designer clothes and jewelry.  The photo images beamed across the world suggested all the looters were black.
 
In response to the looting came expressions of outrage.  Someone identified as John F. Marretta offered this opinion to the letters page of the St. Pete Times:  “It figures the scum of the earth would be out looting in hurricane-devastated areas.  I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt for stealing from somebody’s business if you are taking food and water.  But if you are stealing designer clothing, jewelry or electronics you have no place in society. Police would have my full support if they were to shoot looters on sight. These types of human filth have no place among the civilized members of society.”
 
At least Mr. Marretta is willing to distinguish between survival and criminality.  When Diane Sawyer offered that distinction to the president in an interview, he responded stoically that the police policy should be “zero tolerance” for those who break the law.
 
As a voyeur of the hurricane devastation, I have felt the emotions expressed above, that vandals who rape and pillage when others are in need deserve a special place in a hell depicted by Hieronymus Bosch.
 
But why don’t we have the same deep emotional response to the price gougers and profit mongers?  When the corporate CEOs rape and pillage the retirement funds of aging pensioners, we may want them in jail.  But we don’t line up the firing squad at the bottom of the courthouse steps when they descend wearing their thousand dollar suits.  Why does a slimeball from Enron get a pass from the same people who endorse shooting looters on sight?
 
As reporters and editors and news directors continue to cover the New Orleans story, they should be aware of the deep cultural source of our hatred of those looters, snipers, and roving gangbangers.  To understand the ancient well of such feelings, let’s return to the work of a 17th Century English philosopher named Thomas Hobbes, the author of a famous book called “Leviathan.”
 
First published during the English civil war in 1651, the work offers a pessimistic view of human nature, one best described by this famous passage:  “Whatsoever…is consequent to a time of war where every man is enemy to every man, the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal.  In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain:  and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and, which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death;  and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
 
For Hobbes there was no altruism, no state of grace, only the state of nature, where individuals struggled for survival.  Together they formed a monstrous creature, a giant beast, a leviathan, New Orleans.  The churches or religion could not help, Hobbes argued, only a powerful political entity, a form of government that could enforce – by force – the social contract that kept us from each other’s throats.
 
This is our fear: that civilization is a thin tissue covering the surface of an angry mob.  Our collective fears of violence, of strangers, of the poor, of the dispossessed with dark skins, provoke our flight or fight response.  Shoot to kill.  Zero tolerance.  What do you expect?
 
All this has profound implications for the news media.  This is not a call for self-censorship, but for a deeper, richer and more nuanced rendering of the news:

• As we cover this crisis, we should continue to distinguish different layers of culpability, from stealing for family on one end to rape and murder on the other.
  
• Remember that the social contract in a democracy requires the government to keep the peace and protect the people.  This provides us with an opportunity for watchdog journalism – to hold the powerful accountable for their accomplishments and failures.
  
• The hidden divisions in America of race and class are now fully visible.  Most of us who deliver the news or receive it had no idea what it means to be poor in a big city, to lack the transportation, money, or knowledge to avoid the monster from the sea.  It’s time to re-dedicate ourselves to telling the untold stories of the poor, and to creating a picture of the here and now that leads to justice and not recrimination.
  
• A single accurate image of a young male African-American looter may reveal an uncomfortable truth and do no harm.  But an endless succession of such images creates a distorted image of society that can stigmatize all people of color.  The images from New Orleans are so powerful and varied, that there is plenty of room for solid news judgment matched to compelling storytelling.
  
• It’s become too easy in this crisis to depict African-Americans as either the purveyors or victims of violence.  In fact, black Americans will play out all the dramatic roles that make this story so vivid:  not just criminal or victim, but protector, parent, child, law-enforcer, politician, soldier, reporter, friend.  Our job is to capture all these roles to tell the fullest and fairest story.
   
  Thomas Hobbes would look at the feel-good stories of the 21st Century with a cynical eye, and he would be right to criticize the ease with which journalists declare the heroism or generosity of Americans.  But heroism and generosity are out there, now shrouded by desperation, inattention, and need.  As the days and weeks pass, and the waters recede, and real criminals are brought to justice, and the restoration of the wasteland begins, journalists – who with moral and physical courage have ventured into territory that so many are trying to escape – can work to ease panic and help those in despair imagine hope.
   
  The Hobbesean vision of the world resides deeply in the early coverage of the American Leviathan.  Let’s look for ways to create coverage that helps restore the social contract between citizen and citizen, and between government and those they serve.