Fuck the Corporate Media

[ ](https://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_229191707.html) [Fuck the Corporate Media](https://www.flickr.com/photos/69258677@N00/35010263/) Originally uploaded by [Insurgent](https://www.flickr.com/people/69258677@N00/). On July 8th, I filmed a protest in San Francisco. During the demonstration, an officer was injured. Obviously the injury of the police officer sparked a media sandstorm; however, the newsmedia had elected not to cover the protest so they had no footage of the event. Brian Shields of [The Bay Area is Talking](https://thebayareaistalking.com/) was compiling all the photos and reports as they came in from the protest and I contacted him about my footage shortly before posting it to Indybay and my vlog. In an attempt to steer KRON’s story towards a more balanced outlook of the event, I elected to sell a selected portion of my footage documenting the police’s oppresive actions to the station. Now that KRON had the footage, what would the rest of the stations do as the story became a major ratings grab? They did what everyone else did, they went to Indybay and watched my video of the events, only they also decided to put excerpts from my video on television without asking my permission, providing any sort of attribution or offering compensation. Upon hearing this, I spoke to a few friends and one of them suggested that I simply send them a bill. So that’s what I did, I wrote a letter to each of the stations announcing my frustration with them using my footage and demanding fulfillment of my invoice for a sum significantly higher than the going stringer rate. It worked, and almost all of them agreed to honor my invoice in exchange for the full quality footage already available on my website. I agreed, and have already recieved payment from most of the stations. But that’s all backstory… well, tonight, CBS 5 aired a story about a report released by the police chief in regards to July 8th, and my footage was used quite liberally. Due to the ongoing criminal investigation, I can’t really comment on the events of the night (yikes, I sound like Scott McClellan), I have an appointment with my lawyer tomorrow morning, and I’ll be sure to share what I can as soon as I discuss the matter with him. But suffice it to say that the [news report](https://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_229191707.html) on CBS 5 was not accurate and neglected some very important elements of the story which are quite clear after watching [this video](https://www.archive.org/download/JoshWolfAllEmpiresMustFall/AllEmpiresMustFall.mov) which the CBS story relied on heavily. Judge for yourself, and please let me know what you think. I’ll try to deliver a more direct response to the CBS story once, I speak with my legal counsel.