US TV network CBS has an affiliate in Anchorage, Alaska – KTVA. Naturally KTVA is reporting the forthcoming election for one of Alaska’s two Senate seats. The Republican candidate is Joe Miller who is backed by the Tea Party movement.
It appears that the following conversation between two KTVA reporters was inadvertently left on the phone of a member of Joe Miller’s staff after a reporter from the station had been speaking to him. The reporter obviously forgot to disconnect from the Miller operative’s phone.
FEMALE REPORTER: That’s up to you because you’re the expert, but that’s what I would do…I’d wait until you see who showed up because that indicates we already know something…
[Laughter]
[INAUDIBLE]
FEMALE REPORTER: Child molesters…
MALE REPORTER: Oh yeah… can you repeat Joe Miller’s…uh… list of people, campaign workers, which one’s the molester?
[INAUDIBLE]
FEMALE VOICE: We know that out of all the people that will show up tonight, at least one of them will be a registered sex offender.
[Laughter]
MALE REPORTER: You have to find that one person…
[INAUDIBLE]
FEMALE REPORTER: And the one thing we can do is ….we won’t know….we won’t know but if there is any sort of chaos whatsoever we can put out a twitter/facebook alert: saying what the… ‘Hey Joe Miller punched at rally.’
FEMALE REPORTER: Kinda like Rand Paul…I like that.
[Laughter]
FEMALE REPORTER: That’s a good one.
KTVA have not denied that this conversation was between two of their reporters but claim that it has been taken out of context and that they were merely discussing possible scenarios of what might happen at the Joe Miller rally.
Established US media hacks appear to have taken the KTVA statement at face value but the perception that this is yet another example of left wing media bias is beginning to gain traction particularly as Drudge has picked it up.
Have yet to find anything about this at the BBC…but then I expect there would never ever be a conversation like this at the Beeb which is always an exemplar of even handed political and cultural neutrality……
