RUSH: Andrew Breitbart’s Big Peace website has a story here from Andrea Lafferty. We’ve heard this happening a lot, but it happened again at the rallies for the mosque on Sunday in New York. She writes, ‘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 gentlemen’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.’ Sure enough, a few blocks away, I observed the man in the black shirt getting into an ABC News truck and putting on the sound equipment. When he saw me with my camera, he attempted to hide. At that time it became clear the man in the black shirt was an employee of ABC News. The ABC cameraman also witnessed his colleague’s aggressive behavior — and did nothing to stop him. Clearly, the ABC employee’s role at the rally was to provoke a confrontation with participants so ABC News cameras could record it and then use the footage. The ABC employee was literally making news.’
You have an ABC guy dressed up like a protester. There’s a picture of him here, long haired that’s been cut, maggot infested dope smoking FM type and he’s got a cell phone camera, nothing to identify himself as a member of the press. He’s engaging some guy carrying a sign in conversation and trying to provoke this guy into taking action that would look bad on television. He’s trying to make himself out just to be an average protester when in fact he was a so-called journalist at ABC. ABC’s been known to try things like this. What was the supermarket chain in Georgia where they sent some people in there disguised as customers? Food Lion. They tried to go into the supermarket and create all kinds of havoc as customers, when in fact they were undercover ABC journalists. There was nothing going on ’til they showed up and they tried to create a scene and report it as though it was spontaneous, and this is exactly what they were doing at the protests around the mosque area on Sunday. It used to be the journalist would tell you, ‘Hi, I’m out to screw you from ABC News.’ Now they just show up looking like you or trying to look like you and to get you to act in such a way as you otherwise wouldn’t if they hadn’t approached you and then do a news story on what a complete wacko and creep you are. Standard Drive-By Media technique.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Richie in Raleigh, North Carolina, welcome to Open Line Friday on Thursday. Hi.
CALLER: Hi. Good afternoon, Rush. You mentioned about an hour ago an incident that happened by the mosque and an ABC News reporter. Well, I was sitting on a chair and almost fell off of it because it gave me a flashback from 40 years ago. I used to work in the downtown Manhattan area, and at that time there were a lot of anti-war and war protests in that area across from the stock exchange on Wall Street. Well, there was a young ABC News reporter, and it just so happens the same day that there was an anti-war protest there was sort of a pro-military, pro-USA protest, mostly construction workers at that end of it versus college students. And there was a young ABC News reporter that did almost the same thing that you mentioned an hour ago.
RUSH: I think it’s in the ABC handbook.
CALLER: Yeah, ABC Eyewitness News. And basically at that time it was the NBC station Channel 4 versus 7, and they would try to outdo each other on news reports.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: And this young ABC News reporter, about 37 years old, was in front of 40 Wall Street, which is diagonally from the New York Stock Exchange at 11 Wall Street. There was a protest going on, and it ended very peacefully. Well, this news reported wanted to get some film video footage for his Eyewitness News that evening, and he tried to get together both the anti-war protesters and the protesters and the pro-military protesters together and wave their signs and start shouting at each other. It didn’t work.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: That news reporter was Geraldo Rivera.
RUSH: Is that right?
CALLER: ABC News Eyewitness News.
RUSH: Geraldo was trying to manufacture news?
CALLER: Absolutely.
RUSH: Forty years ago.
CALLER: Something to do with that station and even 40 years later it still happens.
RUSH: I know. Manufactured news, nothing’s happened, make it happen. You gotta say one thing for Geraldo though. Forty years and that jaw line has remained intact. I mean that makes me jealous.