Brian Stelter Downplays ‘Isolated’ L.A. Riots: It Looks Bad Because of Misinformation on Social Media

ABEL: “I do want to talk about something else. You have a Write up on CNN.com about misinformation that is being spread, some of it by politicians. What can you tell us about that?”
STELTER: “Yes, absolutely. Look, one level, protests are always about images, about spectacle. You might even say it’s about theater. And we are seeing that play out in L.A. and I think it’s valuable to have that perspective as we see some of these pictures, especially as we zoom out and we recognize that the unrest isolated, is not overtaking the entire city of LA. L.A. is home to millions of people, most of whom are having a normal day here on Sunday. But in these pockets where there has been unrest, these images on social media have been spreading quickly and some have been very misleading. There have been some sensational videos from today, from 2025, but there have also been old videos from 2020 that are resurfacing, that are misleading people on sites like X. For example, Senator Ted Cruz here writing, this does not look peaceful. Here’s his caption on X. He’s linking to a video that’s not from today. It’s from 2020. This is a video from the George Floyd uprisings. We’ve seen a number of conservative influencers today sharing this old video clip and as if it is brand new. And what they’re doing is they are lumping together peaceful protesters with violent rioters and arguing the whole thing is a mess. And thus President Trump is right to send in the National Guard. There’s a lot of that conflating going on. But if I learned one thing during the 2020 uprisings, it’s that all the good faith attempts to separate peaceful protests from violent bad faith actors, it kind of falls apart. A lot of people don’t want to hear it. A lot of Americans don’t want to hear it and don’t want to distinguish in a moment like this. And I’ve seen a lot of dialogue on social media sites tonight, including from people involved in the L.A. protests who were saying, when cars are being set ablaze, when Waymo cars are burning in downtown L.A., that is not helping the cause of these protesters.”
ABEL: “And we know the governor’s office, in response to some of that misinformation, was saying and reminding us all check sources before sharing information.”
STELTER: “Right.”
ABEL: “All right, Brian Stelter, appreciate your time. Thank you.”
STELTER: “Yes, thanks.”