As Big Peace readers–and Rush Limbaugh listeners–know, at last Sunday’s Coalition to Honor Ground Zero’s rally, I watched an ABC News crew stand by, ready to film, while one of their co-workers tried to provoke an angry or violent reaction at a New York rally protesting the Ground Zero mosque.

ABC News announced late yesterday that they had “reprimanded” the still unnamed audio man who was representing ABC News at the Ground Zero rally. Transparency is an elusive quality at ABC.

ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider tells TVNewser the network has looked into Lafferty’s complaint and agrees that the tech “aggressively” questioned members of the crowd with his personal camera.

After a lengthy conversation with Jeffrey Schneider myself, I am even more alarmed at how casually ABC treats its responsibility to attempt to be truthful and accurate. In covering the Ground Zero rally, the ABC News representatives were neither.

Mr. Schneider’s bottom line was to argue that no  footage which was the product of ABC’s harassing effort appeared in their final coverage. I asked: what if the ABC News harassment of the people at the rally had been successful, would footage of “an angry mob” have been included in that night’s news program? (more…)

On Sunday I was honored to be a speaker at the rally against building the mosque at ground zero put on by the Coalition to Honor Ground Zero. As the rally concluded, thousands of the participants marched the one block from the rally site to the actual site of Ground Zero.

I noticed a man in black shirt with a phone camera aggressively questioning and haranguing a gentleman with the sign, “No Sharia Here.” He was very aggressive, disrespectful and condescending; apparently, he did not like the man’s answers about Shariah and pushed the point: “Why do you feel threatened? What are you afraid of? Why can’t you answer my questions?”

My instincts told me to document the scene, and I took out my camera. I originally thought he was a supporter of the mosque (they’d gathered in much smaller numbers a few blocks away), or some kind of fringe reporter for a small, even fringier leftist paper. When I challenged the man in the black shirt, asking him to tell me what media outlet he worked for, he refused to answer. He walked away.

But there was cameraman was standing nearby, watching the scene play out. When I asked, he said he worked for ABC News. I then asked if the man in the black shirt was with him. The ABC cameraman said, “yes.”
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