AP

Upholding the social order, even as the world literally falls down around us, is one of the things so-called “objective” journalists value the most.




So it shouldn’t surprise us to see Tom Llamas, a man with a lot of very prestigious titles at ABC News in his Twitter bio, literally call the cops on people “looting” in the middle of an actual disaster zone.


GASP! QUELLE HORROR! Can you imagine people doing whatever it takes to survive after they’ve lost everything and been driven from their homes by a storm of historic proportions? I, for one, cannot, as I’ve had the good fortune of never living in the path of a massive natural disaster. But luckily ABC News’ resident Boy Scout knew just what to do:

Plenty of users piled on to point out just how fucked it is to divert the Coast Guard’s attention away from the more than 1,000 calls for help an hour they’re still receiving to shoo away a bunch of people digging for edible scraps of food.




(Re: the above tweet: my colleague Keenan Trotter reached out to the group’s ethics chair, Andrew Seaman, who responded, in part, “The bottom line is that it’s really difficult to say that notifying the police in this specific situation is unethical without knowing more about the circumstances. Even then, reasonable people could agree whether that would be the right call.” Count me as a reasonable person who thinks this was extremely fucked up.)




As the controversy continued, Llamas attempted to correct the narrative, tweeting with a screenshot of his now-deleted tweet:


Despite his assurance that the new tweet would clarify things, it left matters exactly where they were.

Harvey is a storm that’s already killed 15 people, a number that Houston’s police chief admitted is very likely to climb when people are able to start digging through the wreckage. It is also projected to render upwards of 30,000 residents of the nation’s fourth-largest city temporarily homeless. Police have performed more than 3,500 rescues. And it’s not even done raining yet.


Texans are battling for their lives even as regular people rally together to send food, supplies, diapers, anything to help as fast as humanly possible. But thank God we have some good Samaritans out there making sure everyone plays fair or dies trying. Because that’s what it’s all about, right?