The World's Laziest Journalist has known about the origin of the word "stringer" and the explanation of the tradition of typing "XXX" at the end of a story for a long time, perhaps even since when the Rolling Stones were guests on Dean Martin's TV show, but we had never heard the expression "Kettling" until this week when that word popped up in stories about the events in Oakland last Saturday.
Ironically we had seen an example of Kettling occur in
When police surround and cordon off a group of people and heard everybody (press, perps, protesters and bystanders) into the busses and take them off to a booking facility that is an example of the latest law enforcement trend called "Kettling."
Initial news reports said that said that Occupy Protesters invaded the YMCA on Saturday night. Later stories explained that the area had been cordoned off and the protesters (and perhaps pedestrians caught in the Kettling?) were trying to pass through the YMCA in an effort to avoid arrest. Would the use of the words like invasion be poor journalism or spin?
Last summer during one of the "No Justice No BART" protests in
This columnist/photographer took some photos inside that area and then when the doors began to be rolled down, we moseyed outside to get some additional images from a different perspective. Journalists were detained along with protesters. The San Francisco Police glossed over the incident as a bit of a law enforcement agency's version of a clerical error. The journalists didn't write many complaints into the various accounts of that event.
If the wealthy media owners don't want law enforcement officers criticized and express that preference in strong managerial directives, could the paychecks issued to writers, reporters, photographers, and TV camera men, be considered "hush money"? Just asking.
We have seen reports that indicate a similar example of this kind of clerical error may have occurred at some events at Occupy Wall Street in
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