But only so that he could complain about the blogger having access to an event that FoxNews was not permitted inside – paraphrased “they told me press couldn’t come in – why are you allowed inside? FirstAmendmentrightswharrgarbl”
As a commentor on Gawker said:
“How dare you confront me while I’m doing my confrontation stunt,” is not really a cogent argument in defense of the First Amendment, Griff.
If you remember: a few months ago, a Fox News team led by a The O’Reilly Factor producer stalked blogger Amanda Terkel one weekend when she went away for a vacation (following her for a two hour drive), and ambushed her with aggressive questions about a post she’d written three weeks earlier (very much nothing to do with what she was doing that weekend), which were then selectively edited to appear on Bill O’Reilly’s show. They lied about how having invited her on the show beforehand and tried some sort of justification about holding public officials accountable (she was/is not a public official).
So when bloggers Adam Green and Stephanie Taylor saw a Fox News camera team bring their own red carpet (!) and a reporter dressed in a tux (!) to report on an ACORN convention, they decided to turn the tables with their own camera and ask reporter Griff Jenkins repeated questions that had nothing to do with why he was there, all on the record.
Some background on Jenkins from Gawker:
You remember Griff Jenkins, right? He’s Fox News’ hipster ambassador, the innocuous-looking guy they send out regularly to carry on like an idiot around liberals, hoping he’ll incite a riot so they can show the clip on their network and say, “look at how crazy these liberals are!”
Considering that the bloggers hadn’t had time to prepare much in the way of aggressive questions beforehand, Adam did a fairly good job in sticking to questions about Fox exec John Moody’s infamous daily talking point memos to his “fair and balanced” journalists. Jenkins had to twist and turn blatantly in order to avoid answering them, leading to him saying that thing I bet he now wishes he hadn’t said about bloggers being part of the press, and then slipping back into typical bloviating about the First Amendment. He didn’t look very happy.
Guessing game: take a look at the video and figure out what slant was Fox intending to take with the whole red carpet and tux thing?
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