Thursday, November 10, 2011

The Power Of The Blog: Local Blog In Fullerton CA Broke A Story Leading To Police Murder Charges

From Reason.tv



The pretrial hearing for excessive force and murder charges filed against Officer Manuel Ramos and Cpl. Jay Cicinelli in the death of Kelly Thomas begins November 4, 2011. Thomas was a 37 year old schizophrenic drifter who was beaten to death by officers at a Fullerton, California, bus depot in July 2011.

The charges came down after multiple headlines were made, not by local media, but by a local small-government blog in Fullerton called Friends for Fullerton’s Future . The blog was the first to publish a horrific picture of Thomas in the hospital and a chilling video of the incident captured by a cell phone video camera.

“The picture was so horrific that the local news channels wouldn’t show it and a lot of times they don’t think there is much of a story there because they get the police version of the story,” says Travis Kiger, a blogger at Friends for Fullerton’s Future.

Kiger and Chris Thompson, also a blogger, sat down with Reason TV in the video above to talk about how the blog broke the story and what they think contributed to the international media attention.”

No comments:

Post a Comment