AP FAILS TO REPORT THAT JOURNALISTS WERE ATTACKED BY POLICE AT RNC
AP does it again.
In what any reader would determine to be a completely biased account of the RNC Violence yesterday, AP distorts the whole affair in a shameless fashion.
Some turn violent in GOP convention protests
glares the AP headline. The "some" in the report did not include the Minneapolis police, however.
AP gleefully and in graphic detail reports the delegates as victims throughout this article.. I have bolded the violent descriptions used.
Members of the Connecticut delegation said they were attacked by protesters when they got off their bus near the Xcel Center, KMSP-TV reported. Delegate Rob Simmons told the station that a group of protesters came toward his delegation and tried to rip the credentials off their necks and sprayed them with a toxic substance that burned their eyes and stained their clothes.
One 80-year-old member of the delegation had to be treated for injuries, and several other delegates had to rinse their eyes and clothing, the station reported.
These protesters doing the attacking were described well by AP:
These protesters, some clad in black, were operating on the streets in addition to a peaceful anti-war march, wreaking havoc by damaging property and setting at least one fire. Most of the trouble was in pocket of a neighborhood near downtown, several blocks from where the convention was taking place.
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Now, from Democracy Now's account, some in the police force were being just as violent to journalists simply doing their job -- fully marked as journalists with press badges, etc.
Amy Goodman, who was investigating why her producers were being arrested
recalls what happened...
"They seriously manhandled me and handcuffed my hands behind my back. The top ID [at the convention] is to get on the floor and the Secret Service ripped that off me. I had my Democracy Now! ID too. I was clearly a reporter."
The Democracy Now news release on their site explains further...
All three were violently manhandled by law enforcement officers. Abdel Kouddous was slammed against a wall and the ground, leaving his arms scraped and bloodied. He sustained other injuries to his chest and back. Salazar’s violent arrest by baton-wielding officers, during which she was slammed to the ground while yelling, "I’m Press! Press!," resulted in her nose bleeding, as well as causing facial pain. Goodman’s arm was violently yanked by police as she was arrested.
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Was any of this police brutality reported by AP? Here is their account of what happened to Goodman and the others...
At least four journalists were among those detained, including Associated Press photographer Matt Rourke and Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, a nationally syndicated public radio and TV news program. Goodman was intervening on behalf of two producers for her program, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, when she was arrested, said Mike Burke, another producer.
St. Paul police spokesman Tom Walsh said Rourke was held on a gross misdemeanor riot charge. Goodman was arrested on a misdemeanor charge, Ramsey County sheriff's spokeswoman Holli Drinkwine said. Neither Walsh nor Drinkwine had information on the other two journalists.
Notice that these journalists simply doing their jobs were not portrayed as victims at all -- INCLUDING THE AP PHOTOGRAPHER! LOL! Only the charges made by the same police force committing this violence against them was reported. I guess AP never bothered to look at Democracy Now's news release describing what had happened from their point of view. These are not troublemakers we're talking about here. This was an internationally recognized award-winning journalist and her producers.
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Amy Goodman and the crew were released from jail, but the charges still remain. Democracy Now! will broadcast what happened to them -- with video -- on their show tomorrow. You can watch it in the morning at DemocracyNow.org.
Some of the video of the event -- as some of you have seen -- has been posted at The Washington Post...