Amy Crawford of the Associated Press, who wrote the wire service's original Sunday story about a proposed first-in-the-nation ban on the sale of all tobacco products in the town of Westminster, Massachusetts, covered the town's Wednesday night public hearing.
While it's nice that Crawford followed up on her original story, her opening paragraph, based on the facts as I understand them and coverage I have seen elsewhere, was very misleading:
TOWN'S TOBACCO BAN HEARING TOO ROWDY, ENDS EARLY
Only a handful of people were able to speak on a proposal that could make the tiny Massachusetts town of Westminster the first in the nation to ban all sales of tobacco products when boos and shouts from the crowd shut down the public hearing Wednesday night.
From that headline and opening paragraph — the only things readers who don't move further into the story will see — one would think that these "boos and shouts" took hold of the meeting's gavel and brought to a close all by themselves.
Ms. Crawford also appears to have deliberately misled readers about the size of the crowd in her second paragraph:
Sixty or more residents in the packed Westminster Elementary school gymnasium were registered to share their opinions. ...
The Boston Globe reported that "about 500" residents were there in the text of its coverage, and "more than 500" in a photo caption. Crawford only told the nation that it was "sixty or more," before "clarifying" in her next sentence that it was "several hundred" (normally indicating 300 or 400). Is that how we communicate facts about crowds of people who hold non-politically correct views these day, Amy?
The meeting's implied conclusion in the AP reporter's first paragraph is not how it went down, as Crawford indicated in her third paragraph. But even then, she engaged in distortion (bolds are mine):
... But amid shouts of "America!" and "Freedom Now," Board of Health chairwoman Andrea Crete gaveled the hearing to a close just 25 minutes into it instead of taking comments.
"The crowd's getting out of control and the room's filled to capacity," she said. "We don't want any riots."
Crete and the two other board members were escorted out by police, and the crowd dispersed. She said the board would accept written testimony until Dec. 1 and would vote later. She didn't specify a date.
"I'm disappointed that we didn't get to have the hearing," she said.
I contend that Andrea Crete "gaveled the meeting to a close" so she and her board could avoid hearing nonstop resident objections and then play victim.
A commenter at another blog who appears to have attended the meeting supports my contention (bolds are mine):
They didn't want to hear the people. The meeting was scheduled for 2 hours. The board, who started all this, quit after 23 minutes. The crowd was Not "unruly"! Most were middle-aged and most shouting happened when they realized the meeting was over before it really started. And then this "unruly" crown (sic) sang God Bless America! Unbelievable touch by the citizens.
Hmm. So the "unruly behavior" didn't really begin until after the meeting was abruptly ended. That certainly isn't how the AP's Crawford made it look, is it?
As to the crowd's allegedly being "rowdy" and "unruly" to the point of making Ms. Crete worried about a riot, after seeing what Julie Loncich of WBZ taped and posted from the meeting, all I can say is, "Give me a break":
The crowd size is quite a bit higher than "sixty or more," or even "several hundred," isn't it?
As to the "police escort," well of course there needs to be some form of police presence at every official municipal function. But the "escort" appears to have been just a routine exercise at best — or an example of cowardly political theater at worst — and not to have been necessary as a result of officials being in any real danger.
Crawford's treatment of the event is reminiscent of how congressional town hall meetings attended by Tea Party activists were presented by the press in 2009, 2010 and 2011. The Media Research Center reported on this unbalanced treatment in 2010. Media reports often strongly implied that attendees were potentially threatening and described attendees in very uncomplimentary terms, even though I don't recall that Tea Party sympathizers ever hurt anyone at any of these meetings. But there was occasional violence — coming from the left. In the two separate incidents I can recall, SEIU thugs attacked Tea Party sympathizers in 2009 and 2011.
Thus, what the AP's Amy Crawford portrayed as a town hearing prevented from going forward by an "unruly" crowd was from all appearances really an unforced shutdown by an elitist nanny-statist board which was not in the mood to endure hours of intense criticism.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
