Last Monday’s NBA Championship victory for the Lakers took an ugly turn when overexcited fans began lighting fires and breaking windows outside Staples Center. Some media pundits called the incident a rampage of destruction, while others noted that the violence paled in comparison with previous post-championship game ruckuses in Detroit and Chicago. So the Business Journal asks:

Was media coverage of the Staples upheaval overblown?

Rocco Gioffre

Matte Artist

R!OT/ POP Film

I wasn’t downtown at the time, but I did see it on TV and read the paper. As is typical for the news, they went for what sells. It looked like some rowdy crowds, but not as bad as they made it out to be. I don’t think any people got badly hurt, which is what I call real violence. It was more just the destruction of property and things.

Gina Jacoby

Store Owner

Merle Norman Cosmetics

I couldn’t help but think of my store when they showed the broken windows at the (looted) computer store. While it’s true that the media does tend to overdo things, in this case I thought they did pretty well. The coverage helped keep people all over the city aware of what was going on. The bottom line was that while the Lakers won, the news also showed that there was trouble downtown and that people were stuck inside Staples. So between the post-game interviews and the outside view, I thought they did a good job.

Henry Kornman

Director of Publishing

Tokyopop.com

I thought the coverage was inflammatory, so to speak. But it was consistent with how all TV news is covered in L.A. it was taken to the extreme. I understand that entertainment is best sold in a sensationalized form, but I personally mourn the passing of legitimate news. Of course, they chose the most compelling images to make their point. Upon reflection, that might have spurred people on to imitate the violence or go light something on fire themselves.

David Willis

Director

Audio Visual Innovations

I think the media just covered it like they would anything. It did seem a bit much that every channel on TV was doing stuff on it at the same time, but I don’t think that they over-sensationalized the issue. The only thing about it that might have been slanted was all the talk about how the police didn’t respond quickly enough.

Rebecca Martinez

Director of Marketing

Cunningham Group

Architects

I’m a huge Laker fan, so of course I followed the games. But I was actually out of town on business in Minneapolis on Monday, so I read about what happened after the game in the local papers there. They had brief mentions of it, but it didn’t seem too extreme. From what I read there and from what my family back in L.A. told me about the actual incident, it seemed to me like the coverage was pretty accurate.