Sunday, March 15, 2009

Spit-take

Some noodlehead writes in to our favorite blogger about news coverage of an awesome Teabagger protest:

One of the local TV stations–WCPO– did a hatchet job on the Tea Party. The nerd said he had to leave the rally because a few people insulted him and spit at him due to media bias. The spitting, if it occurred, is of course out of bounds, but not unheard of in the Bush years, when the lefties had the saliva going. The station did a 30 second scan of the Square and then did its own internal Fairness Doctrine by highlighting the few Obama supporter signs and doing an interview with the local Dem Party chief. WCPO is a part of the soon to be Ch11 Scripps newspaper/TV empire. The WCPO website highlights the forthcoming second stimulus package and what people can get from it.


Hey, everyone likes to spit on one another! That wuss reporter should've stuck around and unleashed his own inner loogie. Or brought a gun.

In his dispatch, the reporter doesn't mention whether he was spat upon (I'm guessing he was trying to soft-pedal the incident by not mentioning specifics. In such cases, unfortunately, such good faith is usually reciprocated with idiocy).

Hilariously, most of the commenters at WCPO's site seem to think that the threats showered upon the news crews were somehow a mass delusion. "Are we to believe that three separate camera crews were threatened with physical harm to the point that they had to retreat to safety, and none of them recorded anything?" writes Joe Bayer. Uh-huh. I'm sure if such footage were aired, Mr. Bayer would not be the first to condemn such airing as a an out-of-context smear.

Such claims seem to be undercut a bit, since even the city's Fox station notes: "Television reporters and photographers left an area of the protest when a group of hostile people got in their faces..."

Readers should note that this type of behavior is nothing new.

LATER: From Channel 12

Several members of the media, including Local 12's reporter, had to seek police protection when a small group of people began harassing them. Several reporters and photographers were chased, spat on, and verbally harassed. No one was arrested.


I'm sure that reporter is just imagining it all. You can watch the video of her report here, in which the incident is mentioned at the very end, and the reporter takes pains to say that the protest was 'peaceful,' and goes so far to praise the organizer's PR person for coming to her aid.

LATER LATER: In comment section of this blog, we find a purported email from one of the organizers which claims the precipitating cause of the incident was a bunch of yahoos who were upset that the reporters had the temerity to attempt to interview an Obama supporter. "The true story is that they found the lone Obama supporter amidst a sea of 5000 and went to interview her. The crowd that was nearby noticed and was upset and let their displeasure be voiced, but were clearly peaceful." Of course, if you view all the news stations' reports, plenty of protesters were interviewed, and the Obama woman was given a mere second-or-two mention. Message-control achieved!

Permalink posted by Jonathan : 8:25 PM



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