At the newsroom: What happened and what did not happen

author : Brendan Funtek topic : Olympian | Media | Port Militarization Resistance | Port of Olympia

by Brendan Funtek

I’ll always remember the feeling of numbness and nausea that coursed through my body the day I read Vickie Kilgore’s editorial (“At the port: What happened and what did not happen,” The Olympian, Nov. 15). The difference between readers and me is that I walked out of the Olympian newsroom after reading it, reluctant to come back to work that night.

Dissection and accountability

The editorial asserts the newsroom staff were not attacked by the police during the port protests. To verify this, we are given three accounts forever distorted by “misinformation on this topic in community blogs and conversation.” Two concern relatively meaningless incidents: Tony Overman, a photographer, was cornered and “pinn[ed] to the fence” by some scary protesters who yelled at him and took a swipe at his lens; Jeremy Pawloski, a reporter, admitted a police officer swung a baton at him but he wasn’t “struck.”

The third incident, couched in the middle of the editorial, was of videographer Matt McVay being “struck,” not attacked, in the face by a “pepper ball.” As we read McVay’s description of the “pepper ball,” we realize this ball delivers more than a welt: McVay is agitated by the “chemicals” that “spread to the side of my head and had caked my ear. The effects didn’t burn until I was trying to wash it out.” Details of the effects of pepper spray, previously unrevealed in articles concerning its use by police, reveal the “consequences” as phrased by Kilgore of McVay’s experience: “From what I can tell, the pepper-spray pellet hit my cheek as I was turning my head, causing it to glance my cheek and spray the chemicals away from me. Had it hit any other way, I am sure I would be in worse shape.”

Unfortunate for McVay but just part of the job, Kilgore explains: “Journalists covering breaking news often put themselves at risk...But in volatile situations such as the protests of the past week, our journalists are exposed to the same risks as everyone else when tension escalates.”

Yet some of these risks are unnecessary as Kilgore divulged in the encounter with unaccountable, nameless protesters who threatened Overman. “You don’t mess with a photographer’s equipment...The young demonstrators surrounding and taunting” Overman (who is never directly quoted in the editorial) were irresponsibly “egged on” by mysterious “men in positions of influence in this community.”

It’s a confusing, disturbing stance to hold as executive editor. McVay actually included the video footage of getting “struck” by the “pepper ball” in his excellent coverage of that night. You quickly see the camera shake and fall to the ground. Luckily, the expensive camera still worked and a dauntless McVay persisted filming.

Although the three incidents shared little in common, the editorial instructively directed public ire at unaccountable protesters and dismissed McVay being shot in the face by an accountable police department. Qualitatively, McVay’s incident was far more troubling in concern for the future safety of those employed in the newsroom.

Where I’m coming from

I’m a part-time clerk in the sports department, completely inconsequential to the machinations of the newsroom and entirely out of my league to make grandiose proclamations about their standards. As you’ll soon read, this is vital toward understanding how someone like me could even stumble into this now public conflict as a worker.

I’m also an activist although I’ve worked for years to improve as an organizer. Olympia, a politically dynamic town, radicalized me. My education at The Evergreen State College coherently weaved dormant, inexpressible thoughts of conscience from cobwebs to spiderwebs. I wrapped the twitching flies of past indecision into tight sacs to suck from as my education expanded.

As a worker, I initially strode down the path of sports journalism due to kinship with a father who valued trivial names and statistics. Coinciding with a Texas community college education in journalism, I got my first real newsroom experience at the big daily in Amarillo. As the lightly contested scholarships could attest, I conceivably was the only one in a town of 180,000 who actually wanted to be a sports journalist. But what I observed as a sports clerk in the newsroom revealed the banality of this life. Lots of waiting on phone calls, struggles with the encouraged inclination to descend into habitual, formulaic writing. This was the reality of those up the ladder I wanted to climb and I started to shudder at the guest speakers from journalism school who recommended with a tinge of desperation to major in anything but journalism. Experience the real world, they urged.

Getting laid off allowed me to do just that as I moved to Washington state and got back into my only previous work experience: dish washing. For over three years, I bounced around various restaurants in various cities, ending up in Olympia because of education. It’s not easy getting a job here, regardless of past experience, and a ridiculous bus commute to Sumner exacerbated that fact. So when I saw the clerical position available at The Olympian’s sports department, I embraced it with no aspiration toward climbing up the ladder and have appreciated the job’s details more because of this.

By this point, I was already involved in activism and my good comrades-in-conscience would poke fun at my being with what they considered a dubious institution, at best. With both perspectives as worker and community member, I’m surprised how often the newsroom is externally regarded different from any other office profession life of specialization, hierarchy, competition and insecurity. Some elaborate criticisms of particular articles or newsroom policy could often be tempered with a banal explanation that would likely parallel past experiences of all workers but I often don’t know how to respond to those I encounter outside of work.

Although media has every right to be held to high community standards, it would take a multi-fundamental change in our economy and education system to produce the results activists expect newspapers like The Olympian to make. Perhaps my limited understanding of the vast complexity of this problem has led me to unfortunately disregard specific complaints as I instead shift mental focus to the structural inadequacies that will inevitably produce the problem again.

It goes without saying that my little position in the sports department, a world specifically impervious to political problems, is never going to conflict with my work as an organizer. I can separate the two lives with the ease almost all workers discover when pursuing passions that have nothing to do with their paycheck.

Occasionally, I’ve run into social justice friends so full of contempt for “The Daily Zero,” their look of disgust upon finding out where I work coincides with stomaching the realization they now know someone who works there. But I was never ostracized for my occupation which reaffirmed I work for the right causes.

My past experiences at the port must have influenced my reaction toward what I felt in the newsroom from the night I saw McVay’s face to the day I read Kilgore’s editorial. But even without that past, I would have known we deserved better as workers.

In the newsroom

My cubicle wall isn’t high enough. I grimaced looking at McVay’s face that night and I had seen my fair share of bruises, swelling and bad heaviness from friends already this week. What startled me the most about McVay, a man of average height, was that they aimed above his torso. Days earlier, I had seen a good friend get shot at close range with pepper spray pellets at the hip, leg and chest. These were not errant shots, they were methodically spread out so the spray would effect his body. But I noticed the police often pointed the guns below their target’s head, even when threatening to shoot.

Could it be that McVay, a cameraman with visibly expensive equipment, a cameraman who filmed such good footage of police attacks in days prior that a personal friend of mine pursuing a lawsuit against the police force had bought McVay’s footage to use in court, a cameraman whose face was partially concealed by a camera at the moment of being shot, could it be that he was shot on purpose?

Au contraire, replied anyone in the newsroom subject to my open ramblings. After all, how could I know? I wasn’t there! These Noble Guardians of Objectivity sent me back to my conspiracy-proof wood shack, relegated to that special realm of insanity where you’re hastily deleted from Oliver Stone’s answering machine.

But what was most surprising was the distraction of my assumption to others. As I naturally transitioned into more legitimate, productive concerns like employee safety in the future, my ‘biased’ past and erroneous conclusion of why McVay was shot in the face kept changing the subject from one basic fact: McVay was shot in the face! The cheekbone. A few inches away from blindness. In fact, I asked many port protesters before I finally heard and confirmed another instance where a person was shot in the face.

Despite these unusual, brief conversations with co-workers, nothing prepared me for Kilgore’s editorial. I left the newsroom the night McVay was shot assured Kilgore would seek clarification from the police department as to what happened to her videographer. At worst, an executive editor might quietly see what boundaries can be established with a police lieutenant to prevent her workers from being hit again and not bother to inform them. After all, a photographer temporarily blinded from pepper spray or a reporter nervously fixated on a cop’s baton is a significant hindrance to your newsroom’s goal of witnessing and reporting the news.

And it’s possible this ‘worst’ scenario took place. But Kilgore’s editorial externally dealt the issue with such a demoralizing blow, any employee who read it was affected. It’s tough to explain but reporters and photographers who won’t assert themselves in defense of “not wanting to be part of the story” parallel those days you hid a sickness to keep the income steady. Denying McVay was attacked meant Kilgore’s removal as his protector. Which led me to Kilgore’s office.

Meeting with Kilgore

This isn’t a movie, no dramatic climax necessary. The meeting lasted maybe three minutes and Kilgore understood and thanked me for the only concern I brought up: employees should wear some type of vest to distinguish themselves in tense situations.

If you’re disappointed I didn’t turn this office meeting into some grand confrontation of conflicting ideas, I can only clarify my concern rests with anyone who gets attacked in the future. With personal friends, I can legally stand as witness to the abuse I saw them undergo if necessary. With newsroom co-workers, I’m assured that will never happen, always astonished to what extent their “objectivity” produces some form of paralytic uncertainty regarding their basic rights like safety. With both corporate and independent journalists, we as activists can already acknowledge their presence at a protest as being necessary witnesses, a level below legal observers. It is precisely their lack of participation in the protest itself that is needed to convey why we’re there in the first place. Even police are presumably supposed to know this.

I recall reading some online post recently where someone was bothered when an Olympian reporter clarified his position and thus avoided potential violence from an officer. Yet it’s still an ambiguous status, this particular press badge, as the cheekbone shot proved. However, my concern is for all journalists.

In this strange society, their positions are considered the rational buffer no police action will cross. Only a madman as police chief would publicly portray journalists as threats or unapologetically insinuate their distinction means nothing if police feel threatened. The words “clearly identified” will not be disregarded in a police report, press coverage or a trial.

Internationally, we’ve seen this comprehension ignored at times by the US military in Iraq. In November of 2007, a The Independent (UK) story stated “one landmark which passed virtually unnoticed was that the Iraq conflict has become the deadliest by far for the media trying to cover it, with more than 200 journalists killed to date. To put this in perspective, two were killed in the First World War, 68 in the Second, 77 in Vietnam and 36 in the Balkans.” (“The most dangerous war in the history of journalism,” 11/19/2007).

My specific concern for future actions in Olympia rest with this statistic as its not uncommon for military veterans to become police officers. If the Iraq war stands as a future indicator for what could happen here, then it is essential that some solid communication happen now with police and all press, independent and mainstream. This would provide backbone for the lack of accountability from the police department in this port protest.

I depressingly must admit that I represent no one but myself in the newsroom. It took six weeks for me to disregard my lowest rung status and meet with Kilgore to address this obvious issue. Right after the meeting, my fortune cookie told me “Your ideas will be needed to solve a problem.”

Brendan Funtek is an Evergreen graduate and a member of the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace and Port Militarization Resistance, among others. He can be reached at MobyDick1980@aim.com .