More of the New Transparency:
Vice President Joe Biden’s press office has apologized to the University of Maryland following “pure intimidation” demands for a student journalist to delete photos he took of a domestic violence event featuring Biden.
College Park Patch reports that a credentialed student from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, Jeremy Barr, was snapping photos at the Rockville event when a Biden staffer began interrogating the student.
“Did you take any photos during the event,” Barr said he was asked by Biden staffer Dana Rosenzweig. “I need to see your camera right now,” she reportedly said after Barr confirmed he had taken photographs of the event that also featured Attorney General Eric Holder and Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin.
The Biden staffer then requested to watch Barr delete his photos, Barr complied, and then the staffer reportedly asked him to show her his iPhone to confirm he did not save any of the photos.
“I assumed that I’d violated a protocol,” Barr told College Park Patch.
To borrow a meme from Glenn Reynolds, They told me if I voted for Mitt Romney, we’d see Gestapo tactics used against honest student journalists — and they were right!
What Rosenzweig should have deleted were her dumb bosses dumb comments about “garden variety” slaps across the face. But in this case, if she’d been my employee, I’d have shown her the door before this story even reached the press.
But don’t count on that from the Most Transparent Administration in History or Whatever™.
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