Sunday, May 15, 2011

The New Transparency: White House Bans Reporter After She Uses Cell Phone To Record Protest

Crooks and Liars   "Marinucci was granted a press pass last month to cover an Obama fundraiser in San Francisco. During the fundraiser, a group that called themselves Fresh Juice Party stood up to sing a protest song against the treatment of Bradley Manning, after paying $76,000 for a table at the fundraiser (tangentially, Nicole Sandler interviewed Naomi Pitcairn of Fresh Juice, and I'm not entirely clear that Pitcairn is clear about what she was protesting). Marinucci recorded the event and uploaded the video for her online column. And that's where the trouble begins."
 
Update: Chronicle responds after Obama Administration punishes reporter for using multimedia, then claims they didn't  
 "Update: In a pants-on-fire moment, the White House press office today denied anyone there had issued threats to remove Carla Marinucci and possibly other Hearst reporters from the press pool covering the President in the Bay Area.
"Chronicle editor Ward Bushee called the press office on its fib:
Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences yesterday. It is not a truthful response. It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications office who told us they would remove our reporter, then threatened retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban, and then recanted to say our reporter might not be removed after all.


The Chronicle's report is accurate.

A plague on both your houses  Don't feel too infatuated with the protestors, however. Here is what they were protesting:
Marinucci was covering the event when about a half-dozen protesters who paid a combined $76,000 to attend the breakfast broke into a song chastising Obama for the government's treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst suspected of illegally passing government secrets to the WikiLeaks website.
They were supporting the traitor.

No comments: