Category: news

Finally a journalist that’s asking some legit questions. Crossposted from Online Journal. 

See also:
Was it staged? – Inside Higher Ed
Taking sides in a tazing – The Lede (NY Times Blog)

The media and John Kerry’s disgusting display
By Bev Conover
Online Journal Editor & Publisher
Sep 20, 2007, 00:59 

Imagine you attend a town hall talk by a US senator. A question and answer session follows. You line up behind the other questioners. Before your turn comes, the session is suddenly declared over and the microphone is turned off.

That is what happened to University of Florida journalism student Andrew Meyer, 21, Monday — Constitution Day, yet — when he sought to put his questions to guest speaker Senator John Kerry.

Meyer verbally protested, which anyone would do. Kerry had the microphone turned back on. Meyer, holding up a copy of Greg Palast’s book, Armed Madhouse, recommended the book to Kerry. Kerry said he had read it. Then when Meyer asked Kerry why he had not contested the stolen 2004 election, his microphone was turned off again to shouts of only one question per person. That was Meyer’s first question. Meyer shouted back that Kerry had had two hours, so he surely was entitled to two minutes. Kerry agreed to answer his questions. With the microphone still turned off, Meyer asked Kerry why he had not sought George W. Bush’s impeachment. That’s when the campus police stormed him.

With Meyer protesting the cops’ actions — which now apparently constitutes “resisting arrest,” worse since he was still holding the book over his head, “resisting arrest with violence” — Meyer was wrestled to the floor and held down by six cops as he was Tased, then hauled off to the Alachua County jail where he spent the night.

What did John Kerry do while all this was happening within his plain sight? He stood there barely audibly saying, “That’s all right, let me answer his question” and later, in a statement, denied he knew what was going on: “I believe I could have handled the situation without interruption, but I do not know what warnings or other exchanges transpired between the young man and the police prior to his barging to the front of the line and their intervention.”

Whether Meyer barged “to the front of the line” is questionable. The first report of the incident did not have him “barging to the front of the line.” And, even if he did, since the question and answer session was cut off before Meyer and any others got to ask their questions, so what if he demanded for himself, and possibly others, his constitutional right to be heard?

We’re talking about the First Amendment right to free speech, not assaulting and Tasing a person because someone doesn’t like what he is saying. Back in the days when reporters weren’t all whores for their corporate masters and the powers that be, they were aggressive in questioning the politicians they were covering.

(more…)

Police arrest participants in gypsy riots
The Bulgarian police have arrested three men for the recent riots in the district of Krasna polyana in Sofia, the Sofia City Prosecutor’s Office told the Bulgarian BTA news agency. A fourth man had been released on bail. The group has been charged with hooliganism. One of the men has been accused also of infliction of slight bodily injury, while another one has been alleged of disobedience to the law enforcing authorities. On the eve of August 14 some 200 Roma ravaged a pub in the area, but tensions went higher on the following evening, when more than 300 Roma armed with staffs and axes raised havoc about the residential quarter. The initial story was that they had been retaliating for Roma ending battered by skinheads, but later it had been refuted.

Okay, now I’m nervous 😉