No, mate, that's not a riot......

Watching the TV pictures of a couple of hoodlums smashing a window at a London branch of the grandly named but lately disgraced Royal Bank of Scotland reminded me of a scene from a movie which other tragic forty-somethings might recall. In "Crocodile Dundee", Australian outback-dweller Paul Hogan is released onto the mean streets of New York and is confronted by a mugger, to whom his response is "no, mate, that's not a knife, this is a knife" whereupon he produces from underneath his cloak a huge meat-cleaver which would impress the most brutal of abattoir owners.

The western media has been calling for a financial riot for weeks now. "Where is the anger?" cried a New York Times Op-Ed, followed by a chorus of dire warnings of fire and carnage ahead of the G20 summit. Don't get me wrong, I'm as angry as the next caller to the Diane Rehm Show. But where the media are concerned, the mass unemployment of uninteresting ordinary folk and a plummeting Dow Jones don't quite suffice when there are gasoline bombs and flying crowbars to be video-taped. And the City of London is a perfect venue, where the Gucci display-windows and the glistening buildings of the fallen banks provide an ironic stage for the destitute sleeping in the doorways of pubs and theaters.

The violence itself could have been choreographed by those who view British life as a kind of mirror-image of the nation's TV soap-operas, which are devotedly watched by a majority of the population. It's media imitating life, imitating media. Everyone in the UK these days seems to default to behavior appropriate to the bit-part actors from the BBC's stable of prime-time reality shows. These two petty criminals and the fifty or so photographers and videographers are seen participating in some kind of weird cameo, where the snappers watch as the hoodlums smash the windows, but all are careful to keep clear of the flying glass. At no stage does the allegedly solid British bobby intervene, or is even seen. The entire scene appears like a conspiracy between the two mutually-benefiting groups.

It took me back to my days as a local radio reporter and the riots in the UK in 1981. They were not by any means the worst the world has seen, but in an allegedly civilized country, they were bad enough. A "Ska" band, "The Specials" were top of the music charts with a song called "Ghost Town", an eery anti-unemployment anti-Government song, in which the prophetic final line was "...people getting angry". Banks, businesses, and homes were burned. People were injured and killed. In July, 1981, CS gas was fired by police at demonstrators for the first time. The riots of Toxteth, Liverpool; Brixton, London; Handsworth in Birmingham, and Chapeltown in Leeds changed communities for ever. I was a reporter at that time and most of the protests were too dangerous to record much video or sound from close proximity. Certainly, the rioters didn't wait politely for a gaggle of Fleet Street's finest to assemble.

There was no prearranged vandalism, convened via Facebook or Twitter, for the world's media to consume with the demonstators' compliance.

How much did the British tabloids pay these two individuals? How did a smashed window become worldwide news, covered by the most reputable of news organizations? What happened to discriminating, independent journalism?

No mate, this wasn't a riot. This was a set-up. And we all bought into it.

Note to journos: when covering the financial crisis, talk to the people affected. Reminder: not many of them routinely smash bank windows.