Banned from r/Leica for a Photo of John Abernathy being Arrested/Assaulted and tossing his M10 to a Fellow Photographer

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BillBingham2 said:
Rochester was an amazing place full of an international melting pot of great people. My father grew up at 23 Trafalgar just down the road from Wilson HS. EKC and Xerox were but two of the companies that brought many of the best and brightest to live there. I grew up in Greece (a northwestern suburb) that was more working class engineering. While I took advantage of a few aspects of what Rochester had to offer back in the 70's, looking back I missed out on a lot.
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Yeah, I know Greece and the other small towns. Two old timers in Rochester were talking when one said to the other, "Whatta ya gonna do this summer?" The other replied, "Well, if it falls on a Sunday I guess I'll go fishing." I remember the snow on Cobbs Hill, and everywhere. It sure snows there but as you say it was a collection of nice folks. And a grilled Lake Erie Whitefish is just about as good as it gets for fish. Irondequoit melons, cantaloupes, are amazing. I have a lot of happy memories up there in Rochester.
 
boojum said:
Yeah, I know Greece and the other small towns. Two old timers in Rochester were talking when one said to the other, "Whatta ya gonna do this summer?" The other replied, "Well, if it falls on a Sunday I guess I'll go fishing." I remember the snow on Cobbs Hill, and everywhere. It sure snows there but as you say it was a collection of nice folks. And a grilled Lake Erie Whitefish is just about as good as it gets for fish. Irondequoit melons, cantaloupes, are amazing. I have a lot of happy memories up there in Rochester.
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Yeah, 50th coming up in 2027, looking forward to going back. Strange as I was closer to folks in the class before mine and then the next two. Lots of good people though in '77, hope lots are still around.

I remember leaving the Eastman School of Music after doing some research for a paper for my Music Theory class and not having a clue which way to turn (head back down town towards Kodak Office where my father worked). Traditional 18% grey sky gave me no clue, didn't have a compass, damn if I didn't turn the wrong way. After about 45 minutes (a little after 4) of walking and not seeing anything I recognized put a dime in to the pay phone and called my dad. He was pissed he needed to drive the OTHER way, but came to pick me up.

Erie was still a bit dreary in the 70's. I bailed and moved down state (NYC) in May 1980.
 
BillBingham2 said:
Yeah, 50th coming up in 2027, looking forward to going back. Strange as I was closer to folks in the class before mine and then the next two. Lots of good people though in '77, hope lots are still around.

I remember leaving the Eastman School of Music after doing some research for a paper for my Music Theory class and not having a clue which way to turn (head back down town towards Kodak Office where my father worked). Traditional 18% grey sky gave me no clue, didn't have a compass, damn if I didn't turn the wrong way. After about 45 minutes (a little after 4) of walking and not seeing anything I recognized put a dime in to the pay phone and called my dad. He was pissed he needed to drive the OTHER way, but came to pick me up.

Erie was still a bit dreary in the 70's. I bailed and moved down state (NYC) in May 1980.
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Other than the weather it is a great area. An area where folks are nice and take pride in that. The economic engineof imaging has passed but the area is still there. I haven't been there in 50 years.
 
Mos6502 said:
I'm glad this incident was so well documented. Still there will be people who say we have no idea what happened.
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We do know what happened. But we don't know what precipitated it.

It's ludicrous to say that any harm that a journalist who chooses to enter a war zone was inflicted intentionally as a matter of targeting them to silence them.

This entire thing just drips with bias and and agenda by people also think that the police should not be able to do their jobs at all.
 
splitimageview said:
So far we have only been presented with one side of the story. Anyone have a link to the rest of it?
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That would almost certainly require some sociopolitical observations which would probably not go well.

In full disclosure, I am both a long time photographer and long time US immigrant. I have strong views on both. Those views are entirely consonant.
 
I have seen the same story details on various outlets all known for (careful wording here) their lack of impartiality.

Since politics are verboten here, we won't go down that road, but nonetheless, from similar events that have happened recently, it would seem to be likely there is more to this story, so anyone who has a link to such, please share it here.
 
This isn't remotely a dispassionate source of the story - it's not too subtly loaded with bias language like "intense tear gas" (is there any other kind) that suggests whose side of the actual social debate they might favor:

pressfreedomtracker.us

Photographer arrested, pepper-sprayed and tear-gassed by federal officers

Photographer John Abernathy was shot with crowd-control munitions, subjected to intense tear gas and deliberately pepper-sprayed as federal officers detained …
pressfreedomtracker.us pressfreedomtracker.us

Notice that a few paragraphs down, they accidentally provide context being ignored by the unwashed masses of, er, ... commentators:

The agents formed a line and, in several quick bursts, pushed back the crowd with batons and crowd-control munition weapons. While the officers’ show of force agitated the crowd, Abernathy said, it was the arrival of “far-right agitators” that triggered the chaos that followed.

“There were three to five agitators, and they all had pepper spray in their hands,” he told the Tracker. “The agitators were able to stand with their backs near the agents, and the agents didn’t seem to mind it, and they didn’t mind that they had pepper spray either.”

Abernathy saw that one of the individuals had a loose hold on a canister, so he snatched it, tossing it under a nearby tree so that it wouldn’t be used against anyone.

Let's see now:

  • "Arrival of far-right agitators" - By what definition and on what evidence? The mere fact that the police left them alone when they turned away from them? Remember, this is the "journalist" talking. He's supposed to be telling the facts, not vamping on what he thinks people's motives are. Real journalism examines actual events, it doesn't pretend to have the means to do psychological analysis in realtime.

  • The word "agitator" is an implicit bias. It's one thing if Abernathy actually saw "agitation" but even he doesn't claim that. He just assumes they were up to no good.

  • Then we get to the central narrative - our oh, so dispassionate "journalist" grabs a canister of tear gas from one of these people, thereby becoming the agitator he claims these boogey men were. So you are a Federally sworn policeman in a social war zone where tensions are running high and you see someone suddenly "snatch" a canister of tear gas. That is, you see active motion toward threat. What do you do? Stand by and politely ask them to stop.

  • The much larger issue here is Why in the hell is a so-called Getty "journalist" getting involved in the story at all? You cannot have it both ways. He tries to tapdance around it with I’m clearly only a photographer, I don’t protest at all. I’m not screaming or chanting or anything, I’m just there observing and photographing. That is complete bull excrement. It stopped being true when he chose sides on who was allowed to have tear gas within the crowd.

This took me 5 minutes to find. It's not from a source one would say is particularly pro-law enforcement. By his own words Abernathy indicts himself as something considerably more than just an innocent bystanding journalist. Certainly from the point of view of the law enforcement people on the ground, his actions absolutely constituted potential threat no matter what his motives may have been.

I don't think he meant to do anything wrong. But he involved himself in the story and thus made himself a target.

These are the facts in evidence by the words of the man himself. They have nothing to do with whose "side" you are on.
 
It's telling that only the journalist must be held to some sort of standard of professionalism (even when they are in the above example, not the author or publisher of the article, but simply relating a firsthand experience, as a human being), but nobody else involved is examined in the same fashion.
 
chuckroast said:
This isn't remotely a dispassionate source of the story - it's not too subtly loaded with bias language like "intense tear gas" (is there any other kind)
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Having been teargassed a lot, there are three noticeably different physiological responses to different concentrations, so yes, there are other sorts than intense.
 
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Mos6502 said:
It's telling that only the journalist must be held to some sort of standard of professionalism (even when they are in the above example, not the author or publisher of the article, but simply relating a firsthand experience, as a human being), but nobody else involved is examined in the same fashion.
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Whataboutism and entirely besides the point. There is all this pearl clutching abut the poor, poor journalist assaulted by the bad, bad police for no reason whatsoever. It's complete crap. When you choose to become part of the story, you do not get to scream "but they're picking on me", sorry.

For the record, I would feel the exact same way if it had been some Newsmax or Fox News reporter (or any other news org) and the same thing happened.

He has to pick a lane: Dispassionate journalist, or actively involved, not both.
 
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