Some conservatives at an anti-Trump protest caught a Telemundo cameraman stopping two people to get video of them with their protest sign and a Mexican flag. That was all that was needed for the conservatives to claim that Telemundo had staged the news and, therefore, had enabled violence.
First, let’s go over what actually happened in the RebelPundit.com video:
A guy shooting B-roll video of Trump protesters on a street in California, for Telemundo, was seen stopping two people so he could get video of them with their protest sign and a Mexican Flag. It was really no different than a reporter getting a desirable shot of an interviewee. In other words, no news was being staged, the newsmakers posed for the camera.
But a videographer from RebelPundit.com, filming behind the Telemundo videographer, accused him of trying to stage the protest camera shot. “Is that the media staging a shot?” the Rebel Pundit guy “asked.”
He walked in front of the Telemundo person, blocking his view, saying,“Is Telemundo staging a shot?”
TELEMUNDO: Probably
REBEL PUNDIT: You’re staging a shot at a protest That’s not news collection. You’re staging news.
[…]
TELEMUNDO: I’m not part of the protest, bro, I’m media.
REBEL PUNDIT: But why are you directing them?
TELEMUNDO: Fuck you, man, I need to work.
After the Telemundo videographer got his shot, the RebelPundit.com videographer complained to the people being filmed, “I was wondering why a journalist would be staging you guys?”
One of the people filmed by Telemundo slapped the RebelPundit.com camera and said, “Fuck this fool.” He walked away and made a spitting motion.
The RebelPundit.com camera guy whined, “Hey, thanks for hitting my camera, pal, and then spitting. That’s assault. You’re classy.”
The protester responded, “Suck this, fool” and gave the middle finger.
You can watch that on the first video, below.
Here’s the Hannity show spin.
Host Sean Hannity started it with the intro: “Last night, we showed you video shot by RebelPundit.com filmmakers. Now, they caught a cameraman, wearing a Telemundo shirt, staging a shot at a Trump protest.”
After playing a clip from the video, Hannity said, “Hannity producers, we reached out to Telemundo for a statement on the shocking video you just saw. They told us in part, quote, 'The cameraman in question is a temporary worker hired to help cover the San Diego/Tijuana area.' They also told us, ‘Telemundo news did not, nor would it ask any full-time or temporary worker to stage events.’” Hannity added that Telemundo said the video in question never aired.
Hannity began his interview with Andrew Marcus and Jeremy Segal, from Rebel Pundit, by saying, “It’s pretty clear. Does it matter if somebody is part time, full time? They were staging and choreographing a phony shot, right?”
“It isn’t just that they were staging news. They were staging a lie,” Marcus agreed. He claimed that people who had attended the Trump event were being chased as they left. He complained that Telemundo was staging a beauty shot instead of filming the “menacing mob.”
Hannity moved on to whine about the Katie Couric movie edit, the New York Times getting debunked (in its Trump article on women) and said that the media covers these issues with Trump and not similar issues with Hillary Clinton.
In a segment full of distortions, Hannity again hypocritically complained, “I declared journalism dead in ‘08. It’s dead, buried and gone and a monument is erected. It’s over.”
Segal then said this has been going on for years with protests and it’s nothing new. He claimed that protest organizers play the roll of news producers for the camera people and that street reporters are not doing their jobs, asking the right questions about who is organizing these “mobs of violence.”
Segal continued with the unintentionally hilarious comment, “That’s what we’re out there looking for, all of this, and the role the media plays. They’re providing shade and cover for Marxist revolutionaries that are in the street staging a protest. These are the foot soldiers who are taking marching orders from radicals and the media is not doing their job, getting down to who’s doing this.”
Marcus added, “When a conservative comes out of an event, be it a Trump rally or something similar, they’re met with a angry mob. And this mob harasses them, they chase them, they attack them.”
Marcus made his own unintentionally hilarious comment: “The mob feels empowered to do it because of things like what Telemundo did. They receive cover from the media. The media don’t reveal the truth about the violence there.”
Instead of challenging this ridiculous, over-the-top accusation, Hannity helped validate it. “It becomes dangerous for you to report the truth. But good work, both of you.”
Watch the argument that setting up a camera shot leads to empowering a mob of protesters to commit violence, below, from Rebel Pundit and from the June 1 Hannity show.
This larger story is a huge issue worthy of exploration. Unfortunately, partisan hack Hannity is only interested in exploiting the story for political gain.
For example, I think we all can imagine that media scrutiny with cameras rolling can effect behavior of protesters. Maybe they act up to make a point. Maybe they behave to hide bad behavior. That’s lost here because Hannity isn’t interested in real news analysis.
Regarding Telemundo, they’re getting a posed shot so we can get a good representative view of a sign and the flags. The image is so obviously posed I can’t imagine a viewer thinking it was spontaneous. So where’s the propaganda?
More to the videographer’s point, he’s not staging the protest nor is he asking the protesters to do something to make a partisan point. So it’s hard to see how this is “staging the news.”
The irony here is Rebel Pundit, by interfering with the scene, did create protester reaction which they and Hannity are exploiting for political gain.