NewsBusters was the first on the scene Wednesday night to report how CNN was covering up an incident where one of their crews in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota was battered and chased off by a violent Black Lives Matter mob. Four days went by before Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter mentioned the incident on-air for the first time, and in doing so he scoffed at our reporting went “viral” and said it was “ridiculous” to say they covered it up. The target of their violence even defended BLM’s actions.
As NewsBusters reported last Wednesday, Washington Examiner reporter Nic Rowan shared two videos on Twitter documenting an unnamed CNN crew member being hit in the head with a water bottle and falling to the ground. The BLM crowd mocked the crew member and accused him of being an undercover cop embedded in the crowd. The second video showed CNN correspondent Miguel Marquez and his crew being pursued by the mob until they go in an SUV and fled.
This incident went un-mentioned that night and the following days (this is backed up by a Nexis search) until Stelter brought it up for the first time on Sunday when discussing what happened with Marquez.
According to Stelter and the mocking voice he used, it was “ridiculous” to describe their refusal to cover the incident as a cover-up:
There was video shared on Twitter of a water bottle being thrown at your crew on one occasion. This seems like protesters trying to create trouble. This was a story that went viral in right-wing media. Frankly, they claimed that CNN was covering it up, which is ridiculous.
It’s possible that CNN decided that Reliable Sources was the right venue to mention the incident since Stelter was suffering from terrible ratings. It also gave them the out so they could say they talked about it on-air.
In response to Stelter’s question, Marquez provided more details about what happened that day. According to him, the mob tried to shout him down with a loudspeaker and hit him with another water bottle (Click “expand):
We even moved because some protesters didn't want to be on camera so we moved to accommodate them. And then another smaller group of protesters came around and started sort of shouting us down. They had a loudspeaker, they were trying to shout us down. They wanted us to move to a place where we couldn't see the protesters that were taunting the police.
And that’s when this water bottle gets thrown at one of our guys. He stumbled back, fell over -- tripped over a curb but it heightened everything at that point. We started trying to figure out how to make an exit because it was just getting too intense there. But we didn't want to look like we were running. That’s when somebody hit me with a water bottle. And then we sort of started moving toward our cars.
“They continued to sort of pelt us with whatever they could find. We got in the car and we took off,” he recounted.
This was the first time we learned that the Marquez and the rest of the CNN crew were being relentlessly battered by the crowd as they were fleeing, four days after it happened. And we’re supposed to believe CNN wasn’t trying to keep this secret?
Marquez and his crew were the victims of battery at the hands of the BLM mob, but towards the end of his comments he was making excuses for being targeted with violence.
“I cannot blame them for being angry,” he defended them. “But, you know, a lot of people are very angry, suspicious of the press, the corporate media, all of those things come into it at these places. And it was just one of those situations that – it was intense, there were people who were angry at everything and everybody and we happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
What made this acceptance of being a target for BLM violence even more disturbing was, the fact, a CNN technical director admitted in an undercover Project Veritas video that the network was “trying to help” the radical Marxist organization.
They were fine with BLM making victims of their employees. This is CNN.
CNN’s dismissal of the obvious cover-up and defense of Black Lives Matter violence against their own crew was made possible because of lucrative sponsorships from Allstate and Amazon. Their contact information is linked so you can tell them about the biased news they fund.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
CNN’s Reliable Sources
April 18, 2021
11:18:19 a.m. Eastern(…)
BRIAN STELTER: There was video shared on Twitter of a water bottle being thrown at your crew on one occasion. This seems like protesters trying to create trouble. This was a story that went viral in right-wing media. Frankly, they claimed that CNN was covering it up, which is ridiculous. But tell us what happened. Tell us what happened Miguel.
MIGUEL MARQUEZ: Yeah, it was no cover-up. There was a lot of things happening at the Brooklyn Center police station. There was the main body of protesters that were holding a rally and sort of focused on the eyes on the prize and focused on what they wanted to do. There were a few protesters at the gates to the police station yelling at the police, and then we -- there was also then the phalanx of law enforcement behind the gates. And we wanted to show all of that in our live shots and tell people what was going on there.
We even moved because some protesters didn't want to be on camera so we moved to accommodate them. And then another smaller group of protesters came around and started sort of shouting us down. They had a loudspeaker, they were trying to shout us down. They wanted us to move to a place where we couldn't see the protesters that were taunting the police.
And that’s when this water bottle gets thrown at one of our guys. He stumbled back, fell over -- tripped over a curb but it heightened everything at that point. We started trying to figure out how to make an exit because it was just getting too intense there. But we didn't want to look like we were running. That’s when somebody hit me with a water bottle. And then we sort of started moving toward our cars. They continued to sort of pelt us with whatever they could find. We got in the car and we took off.
I cannot blame them for being angry. But, you know, a lot of people are very angry, suspicious of the press, the corporate media, all of those things come into it at these places. And it was just one of those situations that – it was intense, there were people who were angry at everything and everybody and we happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
(…)
