LAPD Says not to bloggers at Republican Debates!
Yes, you got that the headline correct. Our own David Markland is at the Democrat debates pounding out the posts on what is going on faster than I can open up the RSS feeds. YET, two local bloggers with Blogher.com were refused Press Passes for the Republican Convention. Their full story given to us as story suggest speaks for itself.
“On Monday, BlogHer’s Katy Chen and Erin Kotecki Vest were suddenly denied LAPD Press Passes for the Republican Debate tonight: “However, the Los Angeles Police Department denied credentials to both Katy and I on the grounds we are “online media” and BlogHer.com was not throughly investigated by the LAPD. This decision came suddenly after weeks of talks with LAPD personnel and assurances that Katy and I, as former Los Angeles news reporters, would be applying for a press pass “renewal” as we were simply changing our media affiliation.” I am a BlogHer.com contributing editor, so this is of personal concern to me, but I also believe that these sorts of things concern the blogosphere and the public at large, particularly Angelinos. Thank you.”.
We can add this to the debate. We don’t know and likely never will know what if any part partisan politics took in the decision. All appearances is the GOP had nothing to do with the decision but that the blog had not been thoroughly investigated by LAPD researchers.
Add that to the debate as to whether “bloggers” are media I opened earlier HERE. Maybe more precisely…is media and “on-line” media different and should they be treated differently when looking at processing press passes? Chime in LA as this affects the blogsphere’s ability to gather information and report.
Thanks to Liz Rizzo for the story suggestion (and our own Jason Burns for alerting me it was in there).