Beverly Blog

Protests given little coverage

Posted on September 5, 2008 by dmacalpine
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The CNN video above gives another glimpse of the Republican National Convention, one which depicts clear confrontations between protesters and police.
The protesters appear to be be ragtag bunch, mostly against the war in Iraq, but also espousing other causes.
The police seem mostly bent on containing the protesters, with liberal use of pepper spray and concussive grenades.
Such scenes are never easy to watch and police by and large seem restrained and video clips may catch only part of scene without the prolog to explain what may have caused the police action.
That said, one clip in the middle of the video above is particularly disturbing. It depicts a group of about a dozen officers, on foot and on bike, surrounding on protester. The protester appears to be standing and offering no resistance. At one point the protester appears to have raised hands and shouting, “You don’t have to do this.”
Despite this, the police pepper spray the individual, strike the person with their front bike tires and eventually shove the person to the ground. Officers can be heard saying, “Clear the area as they do so.”
Video doesn’t show everything, but what this appears to show is a situation in which a lone protester, offering no resistance or making no threat and completely outnumbered, receives repeated blows from police and multiple pepper sprays.
It’s a scene one might expect from Burma or in Russia, made all the more disheartening because its on the streets of an American city.

What do you think of McCain’s VP pick?

Posted on September 2, 2008 by dmacalpine
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Biden, good? Bad?

Posted on August 25, 2008 by dmacalpine
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Weekly Blog poll

Posted on August 12, 2008 by dmacalpine
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Lobster Fest still on

Posted on August 6, 2008 by dmacalpine
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Just returned from Lobster Fest at Lynch Park and its bad news for the lobsters — the festival is still on despite the weather.
The big tent that usually provides shade is plenty big enough to keep everyone dry, although it’s probably a good idea to bring a rain coat and an umbrella to dodge the raindrops between tents.
Quite a contrast to two years ago when folks were jumping in the boiling water to cool off.
The festival runs through 7 p.m. today, Wednesday, so meet some friends and grab a fresh lobster roll or full lobster dinner.

What do you think of cell phones and cancer?

Posted on August 4, 2008 by dmacalpine
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Dogs at work? Take the poll

Posted on July 29, 2008 by dmacalpine
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McCain gaffe almost unnoticed

Posted on July 22, 2008 by dmacalpine
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When Barack Obama left for his overseas swing, political talking heads almost salivated at the prospect of an inopportune slip of the tongue.
“You’re jet lagged. It’s easy to make a mistake,” I remember one CNN reporter warning.
Meanwhile, John McCain blasted Obama, saying the trip was an example of his foreign-policy inexperience.
Yet it was McCain who made the first gaffe of the trip when speaking on a morning network news show yesterday, talking about the border between “Iraq and Pakistan.” Of course, Iraq and Pakistan don’t share a border. Pakistan and Afghanistan do.
Had Obama made the same mistake, it would have made headlines across the country.
But yet another McCain slip — remember Joe Lieberman whispering in his ear on a trip to the Middle East — went virtually unnoticed by the national media.
Can we stop talking about how the national media favors Obama?

Responding to YouTube’s removal of parade video

Posted on July 16, 2008 by pchianca
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For a little while there, we thought the Beverly Citizen had somehow managed to post the most offensive video on YouTube. But it turns out our video of the now-infamous Beverly Farm Fourth of July Horribles Parade was removed from the video-sharing site for a reason other than taste concerns: Apparently, it’s YouTube’s policy that if a person in a video requests it, the video is taken down, no ifs, ands or buts. And that’s what happened in this case.

The arbitrary nature of that policy doesn’t sit well with Howard Owens, director of digital publishing for Gatehouse Media, the Citizen’s parent company. “We simply cannot allow YouTube, or any other business partner, to subvert our editorial independence,” said Owens. “If YouTube wants to get in the game of hosting video for established news organizations – which it is doing – then it needs to respect the editorial judgment and independence of the news professionals in those organizations.

“If YouTube is unwilling be a true media partner, then, at least for GateHouse, we will need to seek alternative means of distribution of our videos,” he said. (See Owens’ complete statement below.)

YouTube takes down parade video.

Posted on July 15, 2008 by dmacalpine
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YouTube has blocked access to the Beverly Farms Fourth of July Horribles Parade video — after almost two weeks and some 90,000 hits.

In a world in which top videos receive millions of hits and have content as questionable, if not more questionable, than the parade video, it seems an odd move.

All of which raises questions about news, content control and community standards.

Apparently, the floats were fine for the Farms parade and for people and children to see in person, but residents objected when the whole thing went international. The logic of this escapes me. It would seem objectionable content is best on the Web where people can exert some control over what they and their children see than to expose folks to it at a public parade, mixed with bands and kids riding bikes decorated in red, white and blue streamers.

We are working on relaunching the video on another platform so our Web viewers can still access it.

UPDATE: The video is back up and can be viewed here.

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