Keynote address by Mike Davis on the social, political and economic underpinnings of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising. Their will be no solution to those fundamental problems if the voices of the communities involved (immigrant and gangs) are ignored. He goes on to point out that the very issues which the Kerner Commission criticized about 1965 Watts riot coverage were repeated in 1992, namely: the failure to provide a context for people’s actions or to depict the conditions which created the conflict| an emphasis on lurid violence in coverage, while ignoring the words of community leaders| an absence of reporting on police violence. The most catastrophic failure of the media was its ulter failure to discuss the mass arrests in minority communities which following the unrest. RECORDED: Whittier College of Law, Los Angeles, 16 May 1992.