(CNN) It's been 25 years since the Los Angeles riots, an event already marked by numerous TV specials, with more to come. Yet one relatively under-covered aspect of the unrest is the role TV and video played -- and the jarring realization, played out in multiple cases since, that seeing wasn't always believing.

The riots that began on April 29, 1992 preceded the ubiquity of cellphone video and the expansion of 24-hour cable news (only CNN existed at the time). In some respects, though, the coverage previewed the age of viral video, which has magnified the sense of injustice surrounding more recent scenarios of young African-American men killed by the police.

A quarter-century ago, the African-American community had long cited abuse faced at the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department, which, under then-chief Daryl Gates, operated like a paramilitary organization.

The advent of video cameras, however, made documenting such excesses more possible. In the riots' precipitating incident, that was the 1991 beating of motorist Rodney King by what looked to be a group of out-of-control officers, captured by a nearby resident.

"This video camera revolution, finally, they got it," recalled one community member in the Showtime documentary "Burn Mother----er Burn!" Smithsonian Channel's "The Lost Tapes: LA Riots" describes the King beating as "one of the first viral videos."

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