Monday, October 24, 2011

New York Times Reporter Outed As "Occupy Wall Street" Strategist

About three weeks ago, intrepid New York Times reporter Natasha Lennard told us the sob story of the poor, innocent "Occupy Wall Street" marchers who were thrown into jail after mobbing the Brooklyn Bridge.  Her breathless lede:


There has been considerable speculation about how a march across the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday ended up flowing onto the bridge’s road and blocking two lanes of traffic — leading to the arrests of about 700 people.

As a reporter covering the march, conducted by the Occupy Wall Street protesters, I was in position to get a close view of some events on the bridge as the arrests began. But as one of those arrested, I was also well-positioned to describe what happened next, at least for a number of those detained.

After tales of wailing children, confused college students and well-meaning hippies persecuted by white-shirted meanies, Natasha gets to her finale:

As a freelancer, I did not have an official police press pass. I was, however, fortunate enough to be the first to be processed from my bus, with only a disorderly conduct violation summons, in no small measure because of my editors’ contacting Police Headquarters to ensure my swift release.

There was much Sturm und Drang amongst the media elite that on of their own could get arrested "covering" a protest rally. But it seems as if Natasha was more than just an outsider looking in - she was an insider within the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, apparently using the Times as a propaganda outlet.

Big Government has the story, and the video clip:

A newly-discovered video–filmed by Occupy Wall Street supporters themselves–reveals that New York Times reporter Natasha Lennard is not merely covering the protests, but is also apparently taking part in planning and executing them.
In the video, Lennard is seen participating as a featured speaker in a discussion among anarchists, communists, and other radicals as they examine the theory, strategy and tactics of the Occupy protest


When Lennard reported on her arrest at the time, she appears to have concealed her own apparent role in the Occupy protests, implying that her arrest was an abuse of press freedom. She used her affiliation with the Times to win her early release.

In the video of the panel discussion, Lennard reveals herself to be a passionate Occupy supporter, and appears to have personal knowledge of its planned future activities, including illegal occupations of banks in New York City.

Does the Times know she is an "Occupier", and willingly given her space to engage in propaganda? Or were our liberal betters duped once more?

Click the link to see the video - love the part when she refers to her fellow "Occupiers" as 'comrade". But what else would you expect from a chick named Natasha? Here's an excerpt from our Times reporter, in which she confess that she identifies with the anarchist faction holed up at Zuccotti Park–and that she identifies with efforts by Occupy activists to conceal their true beliefs and goals:

Well, that’s what I don’t know. Let’s experiment. But I do think there are a few conditions that disallow for that that are at play now. So if we can address those, maybe it can be a more open possibility. The state of the square now…[people] would not speak at the park. Because being an outright anti-authoritarian or an anarchist is not really something that people like to be live streamed around the world with a fucking police pen around you. So there is a silencing that’s sort of gone on without much addressing, because to address it would be to out oneself. So if you’re talking–and this also addresses the question of escalation; it’s like–yes, there are a lot of people talking about many different ideas. Do they all want all of those ideas live streamed to the entire world on the assumption that everything is permitted and legal, when it quite clearly isn’t? So there is already a tendency in the park that means backing away from anti-authoritarian tendencies that don’t fall into pre-existing permitted institutional structures, or that can’t be coded by them. So I think there’s a problem with the way the park operates now that doesn’t allow for this kind of coming together.

Natasha Lennard, seen here with the New York Times editorial staff...

Remember who is writing for The Times these days, before you ever quote them as an authority - on anything...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

She is kind of hot, though.

Anonymous said...

OMG she is. These are the type of chicks who make people like me join movements. I mean, why not, if she is going to be at the party, so am I.

Desert Pirate said...

Late to the game on this article which I just came about via an Intercept article. Surprise, surprise, mainstream media reporters never, ever bias their reporting by interjecting their own personal opinions into the story! Natasha Lennard is such an outlier!