Reporters For Right-Wing Publication Daily Caller Beaten By NYPD, Helped By Protesters

thinkpr ogress.org

The right-wing Daily Caller website has been anything but kind to Occupy Wall Street, even going so far as to condemn the protest movement as generating riots, murder, and arson.

Daily Caller reporter Michelle Fields — who faced off with actor Matt Damon earlier this year over education policy — and videographer Direna Cousins both claim they were attacked by the New York Police Department (NYPD) while covering the raucous protests in the Financial District today. Fields added that Occupy Wall Street protesters immediately came up to her to offer their help:

“Direna had a camera in her hand and I had a microphone, and we were being hit,” she said. “When I fell to the ground I said at one point, ‘I’m just covering this! I’m covering this!’ And the officer just said, ‘Come on, get up, get up,’ before pulling me up by my jacket.’” “The protesters came up to me right away and asked if I needed any medical assistance. They were actually very kind and helpful. It was the police officers who were very aggressive,” Fields added.

Just about 2weeks ago Michelle was covering an Occupy protest outside an Americans for Properity conference and claimed the protesters were screaming F*** Michelle Fields. Video from the event showed they were in fact yelling F*** The Daily Caller. ATS thread here.

Did the protesters know who she was? Probably not but, I'm sure they would have helped anyway. I just found it ironic and it's big of her to come out and be honest about what happened to her yesterday but I can't help wondering if she still will have her job at The Daily Caller.

reply to post by Kali74


Good find! This is a microcosm of what is happening in America today. Good and decent people on both sides of the talking points are stuck under the thumb of oppression and elitist maneuvers to keep them both impoverished and subdued. We are being beaten up, used, abused and mistreated by authority, by the very people we entrust to insure our freedom, well being fair treatment and safety.

reply to post by Kali74


Obviously the police are the violent ones. There have been dozens of videos of police brutality. Anything from the classic beating people with batons to throwing flashbangs and pepperspraying crowds. I have yet to see any videos of protesters picking up sticks and clashing with cops, punching any cops in the face, pepperspraying any cops, or doing anything that could be considered legitimately violent. For tens of thousands of people protesting for several weeks, that's a great accomplishment.

The reporter and the videographer, Michelle Fields and Direna Cousins, were also involved in the CBS shoving match the other day; the one where Ron Paul said, "Hey, that's not nice. You shouldn't push her." LINK

When the same reporter and videographer are the focus of two disparate national stories within the space of a couple of days, my BS detector goes off. I'm not saying that they weren't in NYC or that they weren't assaulted by the cops, just that I would scrutinize this story a bit more before throwing my weight behind them.

After watching the recently added video from the Daily Caller website, it looks to me like Phillips got caught in the crush of the crowd; the police officer, from what I could see, was only helping her up.

I see one of two possibilities here:

1. Phillips and her videographer are extremely aggressive (not a bad thing in most cases,) jostling for position to get that daily sound bite.

2. After tasting a bit of notoriety the other day at the Paul interview, they put themselves in a position to get roughed up in order to file a sensational story or keep their "stars" shining.

reply to post by OldCorp


From what I could see, it was the police that pushed her down and then after pulling her up pushed her again against the hood of a taxi. Whether or not she put herself in that position is irrelevant, the NYPD during the massive protest (NYPD est. 36,000) yesterday were far too often rough or unlawful when they didn't need to be. But, my point in posting was aside from that. This is a woman who up until yesterday went after every negative angle she could against Occupy and I think it was big of her to say something positive for once which was, the protesters offered help and were kind to her.

Worth noting and I'm trying to find some official sources for this but, yesterday I watched quite a few hours of UStream coverage of the protests and rumors were that police had told journalists if they did not back off when told or were arrested during the protests that they would lose their press passes. While I support the police, and agree that we do not yet live in a society that we don't need police and agree that most cops are heroes...something is severely off with the NYPD and maybe that is true of other major cities as well. I hope to get around to doing a thread on (and I watched this live as it was happening) what the NYPD did yesterday at Zucotti Park, imprisoning about 1,000 people in the park not letting anyone in or out.