Media coverage of Ferguson MO violence

The media coverage of
the Ferguson Missouri disorder over the shooting of Michael Brown
has been all but unbelievable in its bias.
They have made the police actions the issue,
rather than the actions that have caused those actions.
And their descriptions of those causing the police presence
is also astonishing in its bias.
As a case in point,
I am now looking at page C1 of the Washington Post Style section
for Friday, August 15, 2014.
Accompanying a large article by Philip Kennicott, taking up well over half the page,
are two photographs from Ferguson.

The caption on one of them is "A protestor with a Molotov cocktail",
i.e., an incendiary device.

Since when is it accurate to call a person carrying a Molotov cocktail a protestor?
The correct term is arsonist.
Why would one carry a Molotov cocktail unless he intended to
intentionally and maliciously start a fire?
And that is the precise definition of arson, according to Wikipedia.
And while we are pointing that out,
why is it that the media, at least the Washington Post,
has consistently described the events in Ferguson
as "vandalism and looting", without mentioning the arson?
Vandalism is commonly thought of as things at the level of breaking windows or writing graffiti;
arson would seem, to me at least, to be a considerably more serious crime.

And what did the Ferguson police, or anyone else, do to cause a need to set fires?


In general, the media coverage has focused on blaming the police.
The looting and vandalism were briefly mentioned,
but then ignored.
Black violence: minimized or ignored.
The reaction of the authorities to that violence: castigated.
Much of the media, moving in the lockstep mode they so often use,
has spent the past week making an issue out of
the equipment the police are using.
So what?
How is that equipment a violation of anyone's civil rights?