The media went nuts last night about a Republican Congressional candidate, Greg Gianforte, from Montana body-slamming a reporter to the floor. The reporter, Ben Jacobs, from The Guardian, went right on Twitter to report the attack and quickly put an audio recording of the attack online.
I happened to be on Twitter at the time and I follow 800 or so reporters on Twitter, so I can watch the spin cycles erupt and watch how those tweetstorms generate the news that gets reported.
Today on Twitter, several reporters were hailing Alicia Acuna, from FOX News, who reported on the attack. The report doesn’t make sense to me.
“As part of our preparation for a story about Thursday’s special election to air on “Special Report with Bret Baier,” we arranged interviews with the top two candidates, Republican Greg Gianforte and Democrat Rob Quist. On Wednesday, I joined field producer Faith Mangan and photographer Keith Railey in Bozeman for our scheduled interview with Gianforte, which was to take place at the Gianforte for Congress Bozeman Headquarters.
Faith, Keith and I arrived early to set up for the interview in a room adjacent to another room where a volunteer BBQ was to take place. As the time for the interview neared, Gianforte came into the room. We exchanged pleasantries and made small talk about restaurants and Bozeman.
During that conversation, another man — who we now know is Ben Jacobs of The Guardian — walked into the room with a voice recorder, put it up to Gianforte’s face and began asking if he had a response to the newly released Congressional Budget Office report on the American Health Care Act. Gianforte told him he would get to him later. Jacobs persisted with his question. Gianforte told him to talk to his press guy, Shane Scanlon.”
The article has an audio clip of the altercation between Jacobs and Gianforte.
Acuna reported that Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck, but later she walked that back in an interview:
“”You know, and I’m the one who said that,” Acuna told Laura Ingraham about the neck grab claim. “I saw both his hands go up, not around his neck in a strangling type of way, but more just on each side of his neck, just grabbed him and I guess it could’ve been on his clothes, I don’t know.””
What bothers me about Acuna’s reporting is it doesn’t make sense to me. She reports she arrived early with a field producer and a photographer to set up early. So, why on earth aren’t there photos or a video of the incident that lasted over a minute? The audio recording is 46 seconds. What kind of professional photographer misses an entire incident like this?
This reminds me of the Lewandowsky/Fields incident where I watched that video over and over and never saw the events transpire as Fields recounted it. I strongly suspect that incident was staged by Fields.
I am not sure what exactly happened with this altercation last night, but an incident like this where the media jumps into hysteria mode, the Dems jump into virtue signalling about terrible, mean Republicans and then lambasted other Republicans in Congress to condemn Gianforte – all based on an audio recording and tweetstorm smells suspect to me. The timing, the day before an election, is quite amazing.
I am highly skeptical of these sensationalized media stories.
Why didn’t that photographer, who arrived to set up early, get any photos or video?
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