On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 7:55 PM, M-D November <[email protected]> wrote: > FWIW, Olbermann was tweeting the Occupy Boston protest & the arrests; I > guess it didn't make it to the Countdown website...
As much as he and I don't see eye-to-eye, I am aware Keith has been covering it, so I was somewhat dismayed Current didn't have any coverage while the story was breaking. I'm not even suggesting some grand media blackout conspiracy. To me, the corporations who own news outlets have strip-mined them. They can stand in front of the White House and talk about what the press secretary mentioned in his briefing, but they just can't afford to do the sort of journalism required in this day and age, and indie reporting is sporadic on its best days. Frankly, when I started to see rumblings of the sh*t going down, I added a ton of people on Twitter and Google+. Several of them posted pictures or video so exact that I knew (as did the protesters) how many police were staging, where they were staging, and the specific moment they began their assault. Having that advanced knowledge, I could tell who was providing reliable info at that moment. But then the live feeds went down and the cell towers jammed (again, not assuming a conspiracy, but when hundreds of people are trying to post "I wish the police would stop beating the veterans" on Twitter at the same time, well -- the internet is a series of tubes, you see...). A handful of reports/posts broke through the barriers, and eventually the live feed returned in the form of a webcam hanging a few floors above the action, out of the window of a building, providing an overhead look as the police moved in. Most of the phones at the scene were confiscated, so it could be weeks or months before clearer video and images get released, if ever. Most of the video released was of the moments before and after the veterans were taken down, but not during. If anybody wants to argue the veterans surrendered after they'd formed a human barricade between the police and the rest of the protesters, ask a veteran about surrendering and see what their response is. By all the accounts I had, which admittedly lacked any known media component, the vets took a beating. Once that was done, the civilians lost most of their fight, and the cops moved through them in short order. You can check my Google+ profile for the timeline of events compiled either by sources or by my own eye, and note my version of what happened gels perfectly with how Russia TV (who remained at the scene) reported it. The next day, the known media (none of whom were there) was reporting no injuries other than the 74-year-old veteran who injured his knee. The totality of MSNBC's coverage was based upon a story that ran in the Boston Globe, which was basically a collection of officially released statements jumbled into an article. I took journalism in college, and I had a professor who approached me one day and told me I was the sorriest excuse for a journalist he'd ever seen (he used harsher language than that, in fact). He told me I was entirely incapable of keeping my opinion out of a story. He was right. I am a good writer, but I am no journalist. I know I have a bias in this, and the fact I spent last night tracking down leads, securing eyewitness testimony, and using multiple sources to verify information is instantly discounted because of my opinion. Even though my results sync up with the only journalism entity I can find who remained at the scene, it couldn't matter less to the folks who need to hear about this. However, whether you believe in the occupation or not, something very dark and very unsettling happened last night, and it went largely unreported this morning. If you doubt that or wish to refute it, you'd better come heavily armed with data, and it cannot be from any normally reliable source because none of them were there. You'll need to backtrack the events, scan through a few hundred Twitter feeds, browse through 50 or so G+ profiles, watch a few hours of archived streaming video, view 30 or 40 different YouTube channels, etc. In other words, you'd have to be a journalist. Until you have done all of the above and more, you may continue to disapprove of the Occupy movement, but you should probably not question my breakdown of the events in Boston last night. Because I am probably a better writer than you, and I have the added advantage of being right. -- Kevin M. (RPCV) -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
