Reporter Rage

By MEDIA FARM

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IF A REPORTER calls you for an interview, you'd better return their queries, motherfucker, and none of that "no comment" bullshit ... unless you want to feel the rage.

Earlier this month, former New York Post writer and current Fox News employee Don Broderick was arrested for hitting a cyclist named Brian Dooda in Central Park. The cyclist tried to confront Broderick, before he hit the poor guy again and dragged him for about 200 feet as he dangled from the SUV's hood. Broderick, who, in case you can't tell, is kind of an asshat, has had anger management issues in the past. Gawker, which quoted Broderick's claims that Dooda was a "vigilante," also reported that Broderick had been suspended from work twice for bullying and threatening behavior, which means he probably fit right in at the Fox newsroom. He had press plates on his car, which is kind of nonsensical, since his role as a writer is pretty much a desk job, but it's also good, because vigilante bicyclists (and everyone else for that matter) have learned to fear TV journalists everywhere ... Bill O'Reilly's ambush team just wasn't doing the trick.

Then came a local violent altercation between Boston Herald reporter O'Ryan Johnson (with a moniker that's just a series of surnames, is it any wonder the guy's aggressive?), and a 74 year old. They were in a Groveland Laundromat last week when Kent White asked Johnson for help using the machine, and everything escalated quickly, as it typically does in that situation, and before you knew it, O'Ryan kicked White, who has emphysema, in the chest. And yes, it's true that Johnson is a boxer and had 4 inches and 30 pounds on White, but White had 41 years on Johnson ... that's got to count for something, right?

The best part of this bizarre tale might be the fact that Johnson's former colleagues over at the Eagle Tribune Facebook stalked him:

His profile picture on his Facebook page yesterday afternoon showed Johnson in boxing gear punching another man in the face. Last night, the picture had been changed to a picture of Johnson giving a piggyback ride to a young girl.

Good face-saving, Johnson. Nice hustle.

Ironically, Johnson is a crime reporter, proving once again that you are what you eat. The Herald's coverage of one of its own making headlines was written by the "Herald Staff," which is what the paper does whenever it gets someone to do its dirty work, then blames the mess on the entire staff (kinda like this column, innit?). And this article threw out the Herald stylebook, replacing joyous presumed guilt with a reserved tone of carefully crafted sentences, each one clarified with variations on the phrase "police said," like:

Boston Herald reporter O'Ryan Johnson has been charged with kicking a 74-year-old man at a Groveland Laundromat, police said.

Kent White of Georgetown told police he approached Johnson at Classic Cleaners & Laundromat on Tuesday and asked him how to use the washing machines, said Groveland police Deputy Chief Jeff Gillen. ...

Herald Editor in Chief Kevin Convey said, "Like anybody else, O'Ryan is entitled to the presumption of innocence and we'll let the legal system take its course."

Like anybody else? If it had been anyone else, they would have gotten a punchier headline than "Hub Reporter Charged with Attack on Senior." They would have gone with "Herald Hack Attacks," "Muckraker a Rib Breaker" or "Career Perv Busted at T" ... oh, sorry, that last one was a headline for the story Johnson wrote five days after his own headline-producing incident.

What do these reporters for conservative-leaning media outlets have to be so angry about, aside from the decline of their audience, their industry and the Republican Party?

The golden rule of trend journalism is that you need three examples and a slow news day to make a trend. We are SO CLOSE to an Angry Journalist Syndrome story in Time Magazine, people! Can't somebody step it up and head-butt a child or bite a revered war veteran? Do media columnists count as reporters? Because there's an ATM that's just begging for Media Farm to smash it in with a baseball bat.