Behind the Scenes: CBS-5 Cameraman Shoves into Female Reporter and Uses Sexist Epithets

[Pictured above: CBS-5 cameraman to left and KTVU-2 cameraman who backed him up to the right. Female reporter in purple. Blurred-out faces are unrelated reporters.]


A dozen or so camera people and journalists were set up early around the mark where press conference speakers would be. One was a female independent reporter with a modest HD video camera on a unipod, modest compared with the large video cameras and tripods carried by corporate media camera people. The start of the press conference was delayed a few minutes. About the time the press conference was originally set to begin, perhaps a minute or two after, a camera person from KPIX CBS-5 came rushing up and plunked down his camera directly in front of the speakers' microphone stand. It was a sweet spot that no one else had claimed, dead center just a few feet in front of where the speakers would be. The problem was that as he set his tripod and camera down he had pushed his tripod into the female reporter to his right without bothering to say, "Excuse me," "Do you mind if I place my camera here?", or offering any courtesy whatsoever.

The female reporter pointed out to the the CBS-5 camera person that he had jammed his tripod into her and asked if he could move over a few inches so that it wasn't pushing into her. He had room to do so without bumping into anyone else, but he refused to budge. She asked him again if he could move his camera just a little and added that her video work was important too. He looked at her more modest camera and scoffed. The CBS-5 camera person then swung his camera lens nearly ninety degrees to the left by moving the handle on the back of his tripod sharply to the right, thereby shoving the tripod handle into the female reporter. He pretended to be unaware of the handle having been shoved into the side of the female reporter, as if there was some justification for his sudden interest in aiming his camera in a completely different direction from where the speakers would be. (No other camera person present had done anything similar with the positioning of their camera as they set up.) When the female reporter called out that the tripod handle was jamming into her, again asking if he could move just a bit to his left, the CBS-5 camera person again refused, indifferent to her pleas for a modicum of spatial courtesy. As he continued to poke into her with his tripod handle, she called him an "asshole". His immediate response was to call her a "bitch".

At that point I turned on my camera to capture the interaction and this is the verbal exchange captured:

KTVU camera person, chiming in:  "Can she not see where she is?"  
[As if the female reporter's objections were to having her shot blocked.]

Occupy Oakland organizer:  "He's bumping her with the…"

KTVU camera person:  "Well, he's going to have to move the camera back and forth.  
He's going to bump her if he moves the camera." 

Female Reporter to CBS-5 cameraman:  "Fuck you."

CBS-5 cameraman to Female Reporter:  "Fuck you, bitch."

KTVU camera person:  "We can all just leave."  
[As if the KTVU cameraman was there as a personal favor to Occupy Oakland or the 
West Coast Port Blockade and was not being paid for shooting video of the press conference.] 

I then turned my camera off until the press conference seemed about to begin, when things again flared up with the CBS-5 camera person. The CBS-5 camera person called the female reporter a "cunt". While it is not heard on camera as a train passes through Jack London Square, two separate people confirmed to me afterwards that the CBS-5 camera person had indeed called the female reporter a "cunt" -- and the escalated level of objection by the female reporter makes it apparent that the new sexist epithet used by the CBS-5 camera person was more offensive than the "bitch" that he had called her twice before.

Female Reporter to CBS-5 cameraman: "What'd you say?"

CBS-5 cameraman to Female Reporter:  "You heard me."

Female Reporter: "What did you call me?"

CBS-5 cameraman:  "You heard me."

Female Reporter: "No, say it again, in front of everybody here.  What did you call me?"

KTVU camera person, chiming in again: "We all heard you call him an asshole, lady.  
Why don't you let us do the press conference?" 

The press conference then began. I was told by an Occupy Oakland organizer that after the press conference concluded that the CBS-5 camera person did apologize to organizers in a vague way for the disruption, but not for anything in particular he had done nor for the use of sexist epithets. He never apologized to the female reporter herself.