Thursday, August 13, 2009

Adventures in Civility.

From CJR's interview with a New York Times photographer:

AF: You mentioned the crowd taking control of the event. There have been memos circulated online from organizers on both the right and the left about trying to get into the news media lens and approaching reporters proactively. Were people media savvy at this event? Were they coming up to you?

DW: I get the feeling that people at this point, this far into it, realize there’s a lot more media scrutiny at these events, and I think they’re much more aware that there are a lot of eyes on them and what was happening there. So I get the feeling that people were a little more careful. I don’t think we were necessarily warmly greeted as journalists covering the event. Especially a few times, once people found out I was working for The New York Times, I would get really kind of nasty remarks and these kind of things that were making assumptions that I myself or we as a newspaper had preconceived notions about them. Another photographer working for the times that day, a freelance photographer, Jessica Kourkounis, got pushed by an audience member once they realized she was working for The New York Times.


Insane.

This is going to be a long eight years.

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