Vice President Biden and Staffers Lock Reporter in Closet

reply to post by Benevolent Heretic


Thank you! I did read that story and I also read this:

Vice President Joe Biden’s staff has apologized to an Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel reporter for sequestering him in a closet so he couldn’t mingle with guests at a fundraiser before headline speakers Biden and Sen. Bill Nelson arrived and began to address the crowd.

Reporter Scott Powers was on hand to cover the posh event at wealthy property developer Alan Ginsburg’s Winter Park, Fla., mansion March 23 when he found himself ushered into a closet.

Biden and Nelson were slated to speak to the audience to raise money for the 2012 elections — more specifically, to boost the re-election war chest of Democrat Nelson. Powers was instructed that he could emerge from his make-shift cell when the politicians were ready to give their speeches.

A Biden representative later explained that an “inexperienced staffer” had put Powers in the closet instead of a “hotel room,” as was the usual practice.

Afterward, Powers said: “It was frustrating and annoying that I was not given a chance to do my job fully and properly. This was an extreme and extremely inappropriate way of handling the press . . . It was essentially a rude and uncomfortable way to treat a reporter.”

Powers said Ginsburg was embarrassed when he called to apologize. “He said he was very sorry — he had no idea I’d been confined in the closet,” Powers said.

Biden spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander’s apology appeared to gloss over the Spartan conditions of the 8-by-10 closet piled with boxes and baskets, a small table, and a chair.

But instead of addressing the issue head on, Biden fell into campaign speak, calling the small closet a “hold room.”

"Scott — You have our sincere apologies for the lack of a better hold room," she wrote.

www.newsmax.com...

Closet? Storage Room? Hold Room? Quiet Room? NOT a hotel room.... I say closet

I say tomato you say tomahto....

ETA
Here is an interesting point to ponder from the new Obama spokesboy. Oh the irony when you consider this little event and the antics of the past spokesboy Glib Gibbs in how he handled the WH press pool.

Recently, President Barack Obama spokesman Jay Carney told reporters: “Journalists should be protected and allowed to do their work.”
Powers eventually received an apology from Ginsburg and from the vice president’s office.

same source

Originally posted by whatukno
reply to post by gildedlily

 

Do you have proof as to this?

That's the fun of the anti-Obama crowd, as long as it makes Obama look bad, it doesn't matter if it's true or NOT!

You can write up anything, anything at all, as long as it paints this president in a bad light, these people will believe it to be the gospel truth.

The real fun begins when Obama does something that these people are actually for, they start tripping all over themselves back peddling the issue!

Hell, most of these people believe he was born in Kenya, many of them actually believe he is the Anti-Christ, some even think that he is simultaneously a fascist AND a socialist.

I'm not one of the anti-Obama crowd. There are policies I criticize, not people (exception may be GWB; I won't use obscenities). I also believe President Obama was born in Hawaii, which was indeed (and remains) a US state. The "birthers" are grasping at straws. He is also not the Antichrist, which would require one to be other-than-agnostic. I don't fall into that category.

You stated correctly that one cannot be a fascist and a socialist at the same time. Consider it starred.

There are certainly more pressing issues, but one thing that no one has brought up: why are journalists being placed into hotel rooms, closets, or wherever else, to silence them?

reply to post by gildedlily


They are placed there because they have a press pass as opposed to an invitation or receipt for paying $500 per seat at the fundraiser.

The press is there to cover the speeches, not the gossip that the guests are discussing, work the room, or search for other stories. If they want to sit with the guests, then they can pay like the guests

reply to post by jibeho


Save your breath man... It has Foxnews attached, even though the people who are using that to undermine the article apparently never bothered to read the article, since it links to the Orlando Sentinal.

Origional FoxNews Link

Link from Foxnation to FoxNews main

The Orlando Sentinel

So if the "right" wingers are willing to go to any length to make something into something its not, then I guess the "left" wingers will not only believe whats posted, it apprently doesnt matter that FoxNews was not even the source, they must still be behind it somewhow...

Whats the diference between a Democratic supporter and a REpublican supporter?

A democratic supporter sucks, and a republican supporter blows....

For those who need help, there is no difference between the two, regardless of what you think.

reply to post by Xcathdra


while ats may not be overly fox friendly, numerous people have linked to the staffers blog where he discredits the angle that fox has chosen to with, which is why I for one do not believe fox.

Why would fox know what happened better than the guy that was there?

reply to post by searching4truth


Fox doesn't.. the blog links to the orlando sentinal which does.

Originally posted by Xcathdra
reply to post by searching4truth

 

Fox doesn't.. the blog links to the orlando sentinal which does.

blogs.orlandosentinel.com...

I called it a closet, because it was stuffed with shelves, boxes, baskets and other items in storage, and it felt like a closet. The vice president’s office called it a room used for storage. It had a light, a window somewhere in the back behind the shelves full of boxes, and a few square feet of open space in the front. They set up a small table and a chair for me. They offered me food, which I declined, and brought me a bottle of water. They closed the door. I sat to wait, mistakenly thinking it would be only a few minutes. The door wasn’t locked, though every time I opened it and stepped out to see what was going on a staffer told me I couldn’t come out yet. He’d let me know.

While I was in the closet, getting impatient and annoyed, I snapped a picture with my cell phone and e-mailed it to my editor, Bob Shaw, explaining that this is where I was at, and this is why I wouldn’t be filing anything about the party before the speeches. He wrote up an item and posted it, with the picture, on this blog. His post was a bit snarky. He likes snarky. So do I. I thought it was funny. The post and picture also ran in the Orlando Sentinel newspaper the next morning, along with my write-up of Biden’s speech. People told me they thought it was funny.

The vice president’s press secretary, Elizabeth Alexander, e-mailed me an apology, which I accepted. (Today we talked and she said that the choice of rooms was a screw-up by an inexperienced staffer and would never happen again.) Ginsburg called me with an apology, saying he had known nothing about what happened and was very upset by it, and I accepted his apology too. Aside from a couple other e-mails and phone calls, I’d pretty much forgotten all about the event and moved on to other stories I was working on. Then the blogosphere went crazy. Saturday afternoon a well-known political blogger, Joe Curl at the DrudgeReport, called me at home and said various Internet blogs were reporting that I had been kidnapped and held hostage in a locked closet by the vice president’s staff. Bloggers around the country, it seems, had determined that either we had published a story on-line luridly detailing the alleged kidnapping, then later removed it, or we chose to not write about it at all. Either way, we were shilling for Biden and the Democrats.

So I talked to Joe, and he posted a decent account on Drudge. I thought that would end it, but it only opened flood gates, from other media. Some I talked to, hoping to clarify the matter. But I discovered that whatever I said was irrelevant to other bloggers and posters who concluded that I was spin-controlling, continuing the cover-up. Some called me a liar and worse. But the real vile was naturally aimed at Biden. Now we have ClosetGate: the latest big Washington scandal, it seems. It continues. So I shrug tonight, awaiting one more interview I’d agreed to earlier today — ABC’s Good Morning America — humbled by the power of the blogosphere, for good or bad.

I didn't see him on GMA, but since the story suddenly dropped out of the headlines (on FOX) I'm guessing he continued to dispel the horrors of the event.

It is not uncommon for press to not be able to mingle with guests at these types of functions. While they could have made him more comfortable, he accepted both apologies, and he didn't even write the initial report (which he thought was humorous as opposed to an expose on the wickedness of our v.p.).

This happened on 24 in season 2.

24.wikia.com...

this guy was about to report a big story related the recently raised alert levels. the president asked him to hold off for a day so they could resolve the threat without a mass panic. he offered him an exclusive interview if he held off on the story. reporter became even more suspicious and the president had him detained by secret service indefinitely. (he ended up escaping with the help of some people who were working against the president).

reply to post by foursecondpin


This is nothing like that.

Apparently no one reads things.

This is why America is doomed to failure.