More on this morning's posts, and police actions against reporters

[solarbird]

In addition to this police action breaking up peaceful protest, and this coverage of journalists being forced away from covering an AT&T party for the Democratic Senators most involved in the passage of retractive immunity for clear and direct violations of domestic spying law, we now have ABC reporters being arrested for taking pictures of Senators and their donors, and being threatened with violence by police. The story has a link to video, which features an officer repeatedly shoving the ABC reporter into the street, then accusing him with blocking traffic for being in the street; later, you can see him being throttled by another officer as he's arrested and hauled off to jail. Thanks to cow for the pointer.

Comments

[brombear.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...I wonder how the media will respond to this one...

[solarbird]

I suspect he'll get released in a couple of days (if it takes that long), the charges will go away after he's shipped out of town, he'll be punished by his network later if the execs decide he was making too many waves, and any story he was covering will be forgotten. Most importantly, there won't be any of this embarrassing footage of the political class at work. That's the key thing.

(Note for example that to my knowledge, the networks continue not to have covered any aspect of the Pentagon's illegal domestic propaganda campaign.)

[king-chiron.livejournal.com]

Personally I think it doesn't amount to much (I should clarify I'm talking specifically about the reporter being arrested...). The lobbyists/rich people were uncomfortable with cameras, the hotel wanted to bend over backwards for their powerful guests and pulled strings with the police to get this guy moved. If anyone in power really wanted this story to go away you wouldn't find multiple stories on the topic on the ABC News website (along with prominent coverage of the reporter being arrested).

http://abcnews.go.com/blotter

The real story is that police regularly intimidate and push people around for doing things that aren't illegal, often using inappropriate force and lying afterward about the case. There was another case in Denver the other day where police claimed some guy attacked them outside Coors Fields, turns out (when video of the event turned up) they beat the shi*t out of him simply for mouthing off.

http://jonathanturley.org/2008/08/13/charges-dropped-after-video-shows-denver-police-beating-man/

[solarbird]

The story anyone wanted to go away isn't the reporter being arrested. That's an unimportant story. What they didn't want was footage of political figures with certain donors; they were the ones who got the hotel and police to act, as you note. As I said, I expect the charges against the reporter to go away after a day or two. The corporate representatives expect to maintain their dealings with elected officials in private; this is a success in that regard.

[king-chiron.livejournal.com]

What I objected to was the idea that somehow the network would punish him for "making waves." If they were that worried about it they certainly wouldn't have allowed Brian Ross to do a weeklong series on the issue of money and influence in the Democratic Party, let alone allowed multiple stories on the website.

The amusing thing of course is that arresting that reporter gives this story on fat cat influence far more coverage in the press than it ever would have gotten.

[solarbird]

Oh, I doubt he will, either. Really, it'll come down to whether they decide he embarrassed a wrong person, which I don't think he succeeded in doing. But the real point was that there won't be any legal repercussions - if any punishment were to come, it'd come from the network, not the justice system. Typically.

I'm not really speaking in abstracts here; I'm going by recent history. This has happened before.

[king-chiron.livejournal.com]

Are you talking specifically about ABC News punishing a reporter for doing a story they approved?

Here's the thing, I don't think anyone in power really cares about this story. I mean, the public already believes that politicians are corrupt and in the pocket of big business/rich people. So doing a story that confirms that isn't going to make a bit of difference.

[solarbird]

As I said, "I doubt he will, either."

Obviously I am not making myself adequately clear. My point is that any punishment that would come forth from any variant on embarrassing the wrong people would come from the media ownership and upper management rather than from the government, as that latter has been too heavy-handed and too obvious even for the last decade.

The incidents to which I referred obliquely were documented by Glenn Greenwald sometime within the last year, but I don't have the links and don't remember exactly when, so am not going to go digging through the archives. However, it was part of his reporting on the function of the political media in the current political system. I think ABC was one of the culprits, but I'm not at all sure. I also think I recall that CNN was involved.

Regardless, an assortment of reporters and news editors have had their careers truncated (or at least severely redirected) after writing and producing stories reporting on certain foibles of the Bush administration or which were too critical of the Iraq War and related adventurism. They had stepped outside of the bounds of what I refer to as the New Court at Versailles, and were accordingly removed, on orders from the corporate level. This is how this sort of punishment works, and how further such news-coverage adventurism is prevented.

[wrog]

If anyone in power really wanted this story to go away you wouldn't find multiple stories on the topic on the ABC News website (along with prominent coverage of the reporter being arrested)

I would go further than that. For the Republican-leaning folks who run ABC News (cf. Chris Vlasto and friends, who were all over promoting the Paula Jones story and doctoring videotapes of Hillary Clinton testifying about Whitewater to show on Nightline) it's a win-win situation to send reporters in to do stuff like this. Either you get videotape embarrassing Democratic donors (*) or somebody overreacts with their local police connections, the reporter gets roughed up, and now you've got all sorts of material for a "look how evil and corrupt the Democrats are" story.

The real question is whether ABC News is planning any similar videotaping runs at the various Republican convention donor parties. I'm guessing no.

(*) another piece of the puzzle here is that high-level donors naturally want to play both sides of the fence, so that they have an in with whoever is currently in power. However the K-Street Project made an explicit point of punishing people who gave to Democrats; the asymmetry is that the Democrats have not been and (for now) do not appear to have any intention of doing likewise. So there's a certain extra impact to being exposed as a Democratic contributer if you're somebody who normally moved in Republican circles. And yes the Republicans are on their way out at the moment (K Street Project is rather predicated on having control of Congress, see...), but at some point they'll be back and it's likely this stuff will be remembered, which is why I suspect certain Democratic donors are particularly skittish, and maybe even confining their activity to the few remaining events like this where they can do stuff under the table.

[king-chiron.livejournal.com]

Wait a minute, last I heard Chris Vlasto was an executive producer at shows like Good Morning America and Primetime Live? So sure, he's have some control of what stories get covered on the particular shows he works on, but that constitutes "running the network" in your boat? I think that's laying the conspiracy talk a little thick.

[wrog]

the parenthetical wasn't intended to claim that Vlasto is one of the ones running ABC but rather to cite him as evidence of the leanings of his employers who saw fit to keep him in his job despite all of his right wing antics over the years.

Compare with CBS's treatment of Dan Rather over TANG story.