The next time you see a headline talking about “another night of violent protests,” consider what it does: it primes you to think, in the absence of any evidence or argument, that the protesters were responsible for whatever violence took place, even if law enforcement happened to be responsible for all of it. The phrase “violent protest” implies not that the protests involved violence by unspecified parties, but that the protesters themselves were the main source of the violence.

I’ve read dozens of articles on Delaney Hall. None of them–not one of them–even begins to prove that the protesters either initiated the violence there, or were responsible for the bulk of it. When a news item fails to resolve a contested question on the merits, the headline serves to break the tie regardless of the merits. That’s how myths are created, and how falsehood is generated from what sounds like careful agnosticism. Instead of speaking of “violent protests,” why not speak of “another night of violent law enforcement actions”? Because the person writing the headline can’t afford to let you think that way. If you did, you might conclude that law enforcement is the crux of the problem. And that’s not the conclusion you’re supposed to reach.