Racist Crowd Attacks Black TV Reporter and Cameraman

I still remember the time it almost happened to me.

I was a green, just-out-of-college reporter covering the Easyriders Motorcycle Rodeo just north of Pittsburgh in Butler, Pa. and I was feeling awfully out of my element interviewing biker guys and their old ladies (their term!). They were doing things like balancing a running bike in place, using no legs, while the girl sits up in the back seat and tries to bite a hot dog hanging from a line in the air. Really.

While I was watching this action (and wondering who came up with this crazy s*%#) a spectator in the stands decided he wanted to come down a pick a fight with me -- mostly because I was the only black man in the joint. Fortunately, I had done some really cool interviews with guys in the merchandise stands and they literally put the guy down for me to keep him from kicking my butt.

All this explains why I feel for South Carolina TV reporter Charmayne Brown, who was attacked by crazy relatives of a guy she was reporting on, who had been arrested by police for murder. She was black, they were white and they pounded on her while yelling racial slurs (of course, a competing TV crew filmed the whole ugliness without actually, you know, helping)

Here it is, if you can stand to watch it. Me, I'm just thinking how lucky I was that Saturday afternoon 17 years ago.

 

Comments

[Eric Deggans]

Regarding Mark's question -- the reason the headline calls them racist is because they were shouting racial epithets at her as they beat her up.

Her attackers seem to make an obviosu statement about why they were attacking her. Especially sicne there was another camera crew there which was not black, who they did not assault.

So if a crowd of black folks beat up a white reporter, calling him a cracker and such, yeah, I'd put a racism headline on it.

[The Carl]

Now let's add another wrinkle: When the attorney for the assaulted reporter heads to court to sue this pack of inbreds (my favorite is that goober sporting a lit ciggie), will the other TV station be willing to provide a copy of this video? (Maybe a moot point since it's on YouTube now.)
It's a tough call in any situation: Do you stand back and make yourself a solid witness, or do what's right and try to stop it?
To be continued in J-school classes across the country, and at Poynter.

[Chuck Welch]

Take a look at about 1:37. The reporter gets away and goes back in with a right-handed punch. I think one-on-one she would have taken anyone there.

The WYFF cameraperson did a pretty lousy job of filming the incident. That couldn't have been their regular person.

The number of people who stood and watched was appalling. The young man with his cameraphone was visibly more upset when a girl told him to quit filming than he was at the fight.

[Mark]

One question Eric...not snide, just serious:

Change the situation in one small way--reverse the colors, make it a black family attacking a white reporter and cameraman, would your headline read: "Racist Crowd Attacks White TV Reporter and Cameraman?"

[Eric Deggans]

Given that the reporter seemed to get through the attack OK, it all worked out. But if she had been hurt badly, i think we'd be having a much different discussion.

And I wonder if there was more than one person from the competing station there. If there was a reporter on hand, too, it only takes one person to operate a camera.

Not hard to see how the guy who got arrested wound up bocming a suspect in a murder, tho....

[Robin 'Roblimo' Miller]

I'm only going to comment here on the "...competing TV crew filmed the whole ugliness without actually, you know, helping" line.

That's a rough decision to make. It's instinctive (at least for me) to run and try to help. Forget the race part of it. As you pointed out, when you were threatened early in your career by at least one racist, other whites came to your rescue. Most people, race aside, are more likely to help a victim than pile on.

If the competing news camera guy had rushed to help Charmayne, he'd be a Good Guy and all that, but there would be no direct, unimpeachable evidence of the crime.

In the long run, considering the criminal and civil cases that will surely result from this incident, the cameraman who shot the scene, instead of jumping into the melee, did Charmayne more good than if he'd kept a couple of punches from landing.