Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s campaign on Wednesday defended its decision to kick out a Breitbart News reporter from a campaign event held at a historically black college earlier this week.
“Beto Team Defends Kicking Out Breitbart Journalist.”
Oxymoron Hall of Fame:
The incident echoes fellow 2020 Democratic candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) refusal to hold a town hall on Fox News, which she described as a “hate-for-profit racket.”
Shutting down hate for profit rackets will lop about a point off the nation’s GDP.
Calling Breitbart a news organization stretches the Chiclet well past the moon.
" The incident echoes fellow 2020 Democratic candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) refusal to hold a town hall on Fox News, which she described as a “hate-for-profit racket.”
Not to pick fights here, just wanna get some insights and I’m open to being corrected. I think the two things are different. First, FOX is an organization while the “journalist” is an individual (he was kicked out because of his personal behavior, not because he works for Breitbart). Second, whether to go on FOX is a choice to be made while the campaign event is not (the candidate was the one who made an invitation to the public). I get the rationale that going on FOX is to help a crime organization profit, but I don’t quite understand the logic behind kicking out a rethug before he started doing harm in an open event.
Breitbart is not press, if you are confused ask Shirley Sherrod they did a great job reporting on her (snark)
Aleigha Cavalier, said in a statement on Wednesday that the campaign “believes in the right to a free press,” but that Breitbart “walks the line between being news and a perpetrator of hate speech.”
Stop me if you’ve heard this one, but that was a pretty cavalier statement…
Freedom of speech and press does not require unfettered access by propagandists (or anyone else, for that matter).
I love hearing about Breitbart news. It reminds me that Andrew Breitbart himself is still dead and rotting in hell, and that always cheers me up.
Send him back!
Good on Beto. They need to be actively pushed out, they can’t be ignored.
So if Beto wins the nomination (yeah, right), his campaign will pick and choose which organizations will cover his rallies etc? That sounds trumpian to me
Good; organizations like Breitbart and Fox should be shunned
Normally I would oppose kicking out a “journalist” from a campaign event. But the right-wing media is not journalism. It’s propaganda. It’s time progressives and progressive candidates start focusing on this country’s real problem: The goal of right-wing news organizations is to mislead, not inform. And there are so many misinformed voters that we end up with people like Dump in power. The guy could have never been elected 20 years ago, and the right-wing media is the reason fascism can flourish today.
So, where’s the DC press corps on Brian Karem getting his WH press pass back?
…sounds of shuffling feet…
“Gun Culture”
This is dangerous. If the reporter was behaving he should not be asked to leave because we don’t like the way he sees the world. Either his message can withstand debate and analysis or it cannot.
There is no first amendment issue here. Beto is not the president, there is no goverment edict at work here. There is no obligation on his part to coddle mountebanks. And fuck optics!
It was both.
O’Rourke’s press secretary, Aleigha Cavalier, said in a statement on Wednesday that the campaign “believes in the right to a free press,” but that Breitbart “walks the line between being news and a perpetrator of hate speech.”
Another fine example of how IOKIYAR.
How many press credentials have already been lifted by the Pres and other GOPpers? How many media companies have been banned by the WH?? Who was it again that was no longer welcome at the disastrous WH press briefings that are no longer held?
But Beto has to defend kicking someone out.
Why defend anything?? Messaging, folks, messaging. If the Right is gonna accuse ‘bothsiderism’, then let’s give them something real and honest to yammer about. And throw it back in their faces every time they do.
No apologies for enacting the behavior the Right has normalized.