RNC 2008: Two NBC Camera Crews Arrested And I Search For Artifacts Of The Teargassed March On A Dark Street

Photos by John Hoff

WORD ON THE STREET is as follows: two NBC camera crews affiliated with Charlene Gubash (second photo, above) were arrested on September 4 during convention protests. As a result NBC had no tape of the protests in question, because their crews (and tape) were in the hands of police.

Journalists were...

...not so much "targeted" as "undifferentiated" from marchers and protesters, and as a result of their journalistic need to get near the heart of the action, reporters were frequently caught in the same net as the other fish. Gee, how can members of the press be so brazen as to think they have a "right" to cover a story about a protest in the street? You'd think freedom of the press was in the Constitution or something along with "right to free assembly" and all that hogwash.

Several hours after marchers were gassed in front of the Greyhound bus station in St. Paul, I walked back to the Capitol grounds to retrieve my bike and partially retraced the route of the "March Into A Meat Grinder" to tactically assess what had happened. Near Greyhound, I began spotting objects the marchers had dropped as they fled from tear gas: a red carnation. A bottle of water, half full, trampled by a fleeing foot. Part of a camera tripod. And something which looked like press identification of some kind, pictured above.

Was that identification dropped? Was this just litter, something randomly lost prior to the march? Or did somebody FRANTICALLY RIP THIS OFF THEIR NECK? Or, you know, maybe they had some help from a St. Paul police officer ripping it off their neck. I read how Amy Goodman had her press credentials ripped off HER neck and there's video of part of the incident, click here.

I believe, in retrospect, people will look at RNC 2008 as a watershed event for blogger media and independent, grassroots media. Since we never believed we'd be safe from the police, anyway, we managed to get away with our tapes, photos and stories through our usual paranoid cunning. With journalists being arrested, even those from major networks like NBC, being a blogger who could blend in with the crowd became an advantage when, normally, the "big fish" media had all the access advantages.

And I caught myself doing something I don't usually do: After comparing blog coverage with mainstream media coverage, after Monday I started turning to the blogosphere FIRST to get stories about the protests.

And I didn't want 15 seconds of dramatic tape introduced by a talking head. I want raw, uncut footage so I can try to spot myself and my friends running from tear gas. Here is an outstanding example of raw footage, click here.