You make an excellent point, Wolfgang. That kind of prejudicial "slant" by loanguage is always possible, and may always be used unscrupulously.

But nowadays American journalists are taught early on to be very careful about unconscious prejudice in language, not to mention being as accurate as possible in reporting what they see That wasn't always the case, but has been for at least the past thirty years. I suspect that the photographer asked the people where they got the stuff, and one said "Um, we found it outside the store" and the other, maybe more truthfully, said "Everybody was grabbing things so I just took what I needed."

Naturally I don't know for sure. Anyway, the caption writer had no right, under current professional standards, to assume what the "facts" were. He or she is supposed to rely on the word of the reporter, who is supposed to report only what he sees and hears.