Remember my post a week ago about Martha Robertson’s visit to Cornell and the accompanying media lockdown enforced by the Cornell Democrats?
Video and audio recording were not permitted, according to an announcement just before Robertson started her speech.
I attended but did not record because of those rules and how watchful Cornell Democrats were to ensure compliance.
A videographer for Cornell’s main student newspaper, the Daily Sun, managed to take video, a nearly two-minute long clip of which was published on the Daily Sun’s website two days later.
But the Daily Sun’s video was not just by chance.
After learning of the existence of the video, I immediately contacted the Sun videographer, asking if she obtained prior permission. She said she did from both the Cornell Democrats club and the Martha Robertson Campaign.
She went on to tell me that she worked for the Robertson campaign as an intern.
Then it all clicked.
Those video and audio recording rules were a ruse meant to avoid embarrassing video clips, like the one Professor Jacobson videotaped at a Robertson appearance at Cornell last spring. If only a campaign intern could record, then any embarrassing clips would never see the light of day.
Both the videographer and the Cornell Democrats president are in this image of interns tweeted by Robertson earlier this month:
Martha Robertson, who is notoriously aloof from the media, seems only open to media represented by her own insider, while keeping independent and conservative media away.
You can read my original post, including about my attempts to get answers, at The Cornell Review’s Review Blog.
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