Did News & Observer edit video to protect a candidate?
UPSTAGED: The News & Observer inexplicably cut this still photo into its video of demonstrators at a U.S. senate candidate Kay Hagan speech.
By Staff | Watchdog.org
Raleigh, N.C. – Advocates of more liberal immigration policies took the stage with U.S. senate candidate Kay Hagan at an Oct. 26 campaign stop.
Two problems here: they weren’t invited speakers, and the Charlotte News & Observer apparently handled the problem by deleting the interruption.
Go to this blog post and look at the unedited video and and you’ll see so-called DREAMers holding up protest signs and then walking on stage while Hagan tries to speak. Hagan’s handlers make weak attempts to stop them, but in the end Hagan just ends her talk.
Now check out the N&O’s abbreviated video:
At about the 2:26 mark, video of Hagan’s speech is cut off, replaced for a moment by a curious, Soviet-style still photo of the DREAMers and a Charlie Chaplain-era title card that tells you the people in the curious photo interrupted her speech. When the video resumes, it ends abruptly. There’s no footage of the DREAMers holding their signs heckling Hagan, or her awkward attempts to manage the situation – just Hagan celebrating with supporters and the odd, ambient sound of Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” the anthemic song that opened Spike Lee’s 1989 film “Do the Right Thing”:
