WDBJ Shooting Exposes the Ugly Underbelly of Social Media; Coverage

RUSH: You know when I first heard about the shooting in Virginia this morning, I thought it had to be a lovers thing. The original reports were that the reporter and the cameraman were engaged, and they are, but not to each other. But the original report had them engaged to each other. So the shooting happens and I thought it had to be a lovers triangle. Turns out that's not what it was. It's a racist, I should say racial incident, perhaps. It's gonna be a big, big conflict for the media here as this goes forward.

Greetings, my friends, Rush Limbaugh, back, happy to be here behind the Golden EIB Microphone. The telephone number if you want to be on the program's 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

This may be a first. And boy, is this the underbelly, the ugly side of social media. What an episode. Here you have a disgruntled employee, his air name is Bryce Williams. His actual name is Vester Flanagan. Vester J. Flanagan is his real name. He went by Bryce Williams on the air. He was a reporter at the station and he's got this manifesto that he wrote. But what he did, he actually videotaped himself committing this crime. He had his cell phone camera in one hand, his gun in the other. He videotaped it. It was posted for a while, I think on Facebook, before it was pulled down. I mean, you want to talk about the ugly underbelly of social media. This is taking it to a level that nobody has ever dreamed of.

Hillary Clinton's already come out and politicized this. Probably not the first, but she's the most prominent early on to start shouting "gun control, gun control." Well, let me suggest that maybe journalists might want to consider arming themselves as they go out now. But it's interesting to follow the timeline on this, folks, when it started. You could tell -- well, let me not put thoughts in your mind. I could tell as I watch this, you can if you're a student of this, as am I, you can read between the lines. You know what the journalists reporting this are thinking before the facts are known.

It is clear to me that all the journalists reporting this before anybody knew anything other than a reporter and cameraman are dead, that it was open season on the media. And by that, open season on the media, then who did they think would have open season on the media? You can see where they would be thinking this would be going. I guarantee you there were probably reporters, investigative reporters trying to tie this, if they could, to some political group with which they might not agree, such as the Tea Party. You could just see it. I mean, everything's become politicized.

You know, I was out in California for the past five days and I played golf with some friends and one of them asked me if I'd listened to the podcast titled Serial on NPR. I said, "No."

"Yes, I am." Everything that happens in this country is politicized. Everything that happens is tied to a political agenda, predominantly the leftist political agenda, and you could see it in this incident. You could see what they originated thought. Nobody came out and said it, but you could tell by the way they were talking to each other and the fears they were expressing that they thought it might open season on the media and they were ready to go blame Trump for it. They were ready to go blame any rabble-rouser they could. And now the conflict, "Oh, no, a reporter is the shooter." And furthermore, a reporter of color was the shooter. Now there's a conflict. Now what do they do.

Hey, don't get mad at me, folks. I'm just the one telling you how it is, because everything has to be politicized. This thing eventually will be and that's where the conflict is going to come in. It's horrible. It is an absolutely just despicable thing. And the media's gone wall-to-wall with it, as you can image. I mean, it's about them. If you take out the vocations of the people involved, if you had a couple of white people shot by a person of color, you might not even hear about it, and if you did hear about it, there would be maybe not excuses, but rationale. And we would be advised that it would be worth our time to figure out why the rage was there.

But that can't work because the victims are in the media. It's gonna be a very, very conflicted thing for people reporting on this trying to convert it into some sort of political agenda. They're gonna have a tough time doing that. And hopefully they won't. I mean, the great thing would be if they just didn't, but they do. The TV station is WDBJ, and it was at 6:45 a.m. today. They were doing a story with a local woman who was also shot. She's in surgery now, or was, local hospital. They were doing a bit on tourism. They were out at some part of town that was being touted as a great place to come, great place to visit, and you can see it. The shooter walks up. You don't see the shooter, but you hear the screams. You see the shots, the impact of the shots and so forth, and it's unlike anything you've ever seen.

Then you find out the shooter was actually videotaping it. By the way, the shooter shot himself. He was fleeing on I-65. They came across him, found his car open, he got out, I guess shot himself after posting the killing on social media. Ten page or multipage manifesto describing his complaints, and some things that made him happy at various stops along his career. But I don't think we've ever seen anything like this. It may be an all-time first, first of its kind.

Journalist lives matter. Well, they do. Don't smirk at me like that Snerdley. They do. Well, they do. All lives matter.

RUSH: All right. Now, as best as I can gather here, ladies and gentlemen, there's conflicting reports over whether or not the shooter, Bryce Williams, a/k/a Vester Flanagan, is dead. ABC News, I guess, was the original source for this, saying they got a fax. Well, I mean it's good enough for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. They send out a fax, it becomes news. So if the shooter sends out a fax, why shouldn't that become news? That's what they said happened.

But now there's some conflicting reports that the shooter may not be dead, may not have shot himself. They just don't know yet, at least that is as of 30 seconds ago. We're doing our best to follow this while also executing today's excursion into broadcast excellence.

RUSH: Okay. The authorities are calling the murder of the WDBJ reporter and cameraman today "workplace violence." The shooter was also a disgruntled employee there by the name of Vester Flanagan, a/k/a Bryce Williams. And he apparently has shot himself and has life-threatening injuries as a result of shooting himself. I guess he's in the hospital or on the way. But they're calling it "workplace violence" as of now.

RUSH: It's confirmed the shooter, the man who murdered Allison Parker and Adam Ward as they were doing their jobs today in Roanoke, Virginia, the shooter, Vester Flanagan, Vester Lee Flanagan, stage name Bryce Williams, did shoot himself. He's hospitalized with life-threatening injuries. Law enforcement found him. They confronted him on I-66. That's when he shot himself. He's injured and facing life-threatening injuries. ABC News says it got a fax containing a 23-page manifesto from somebody named Bryce Williams, who happens to be Vester Flanagan.

It turns out that Vester Flanagan was canned a couple of years ago. He couldn't get along with anybody, and he hasn't gotten over it. Two years ago he was canned. He was still lurking in the area. He said that coworkers had turned him in to human resources after having worked with him for one day. That the reporter, Allison Parker, had made racist comments and it was unacceptable, and so he's been festering here. He hasn't been able to find a job, find work, so it finally got the best of him, and he went out there and pulled the trigger.

Now the governor of the state, The Punk, Terry McAuliffe, he's the second. Hillary Clinton was first to politicize this, to go out there and start sawing we gotta get guns out of the hands of people that have no business having them. We gotta do this, too many guns out there, gun control. What we need, journalists need to be armed. Journalists' lives matters, right? Arm 'em. Journalists' lives matter. Hands up in the air. Whatever. I mean, what's gonna happen here. I just watched the video. This guy sunk to depths never before seen. Social media, what an ugly media and social media episode. This guy on the one hand he had the gun, on the other hand he had his cell phone, shooting it, the camera.

I don't know, it's about a minute long. And you see him walk into the area, and he's standing there, his camera aimed at the reporter and the cameraman interviewing the local woman from the Chamber of Commerce, who, I think she's okay. She was also shot. She's in surgery or recovery now, whatever, but they say she's stable condition, I think. But they're all standing there. The reporter is asking the questions. The guest is answering them. The cameraman is alternately shooting them and then rotating and shooting the lake or the scenery.

And then you see the gun raise, the guy fires two shots at this poor reporter, and she shrieks and cries out in terror and begins running, running away. And it was after that the cameraman got shot. You don't actually see this. This video has been pulled down. He posted it on his Facebook page. It's since been pulled down at Facebook, but there's a link to it at the Drudge Report. The station manager came out at WDBJ and said, "I'm gonna drop my journalism hat for a second and say I don't know whether I hope this man lives or dies." He couldn't say that as a journalist, see. Jorge Ramos could, but he couldn't. He couldn't say that as a journalist. He had to say I'm not wearing my journalist hat now. "I can't honestly say I hope this man lives. " Meaning, Vester Flanagan, a/k/a Bryce Williams.

Now, the shooter is a person of color, African-American, and the reporter and cameraman are white. So this will undoubtedly provide a -- well, not provide. It will present a bit of a conflict for the media once they get through this day. Subsequent days, looking back at the incident, reporting on it, when they will then try to shape it for whatever benefit they think it has. And look, I hate saying this, folks, but I know the drill here, and so do you. We've already got McAuliffe and Hillary out there calling for gun control.

The authorities are calling this workplace violence, even though the shooter said, "Hey, that woman made racist comments about me." That's in his manifesto fax. How come now all of these murderers have manifestos? You know when that started? It started with the guy that was read Algore's books, had the shack out there. The Unabomber. The Unabomber had this massive manifesto. He was a fallen liberal. Remember?

Ted Kaczynski. He's a fallen liberal, fallen liberal academic, fallen liberal intellectual, and he had this massive manifesto, and the New York Times succumbed and published the whole thing in response for him turning himself in. They found Algore's book. He had a one-room shack somewhere out in the woods where he was holed up. And ever since then shooters have manifestos, and it becomes obligatory that we read them.

RUSH: By the way, Vester Flanagan, as is the usual case, we're beginning to learn more and more about the man. He sued another TV station for racism a decade before he was asked to leave the Virginia station amid claims of racial bias. So there's clearly race on this guy's mind as a motivation for his activities. He sues a station ten years ago, claiming that they were racist in their attitudes toward him. He claimed that he was called a monkey by one of his bosses at a station in north Florida. And then he claimed that this reporter that he shot this morning had made racist comments about him. But it was just workplace violence, you see, that's what the authorities are saying.

It does kind of look like it was lightened, but...without seeing another picture, I wouldn't jump to that conclusion.

I have seen another screen grab on the internet. And the one used in the breitbart story appears lightened. Not sure if the photo is an AP photo or not though. No attribution.

I don’t think it’s been ‘shopped.
I think it’s a result of the local lighting and the cell phone he was using.

I know my phone, a cheap one, has trouble adjusting lighting at times.

It’s probably his hand.
Darker colors reflect light differently than lighter colors.
I know, I know, racist old me.

Let’s not go all Sandy Hook Truther on this thing.

Flanagan/Williams was a light-skinned black man.

The very first screenshot that came out was from some investigative moron who didn’t know how to do a computer screenshot. He/she instead took a photo of a TV screen, which appeared way darker than normal because LED screens vs. camera phones suck.

This is very apparent in the video taken by the shooter. His sleeve is blue plaid, not black as originally reported (as in, from the original screen grab). His skin tone was much lighter as well in the broad daylight.

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity. In this case, on the part of the non tech-savvy people in too much of a hurry while shoving the story out the door.

The third picture you linked has the exact problem I described in my previous post: it’s a photo taken of a TV screen, which makes things look a lot darker, especially at certain angles of the screen.

No need for Photoshopping or anything like that.

To see what I’m talking about, all you need is a camera phone, an LED screen, and something with a bright color.

Step 1: Take a picture of the colored object with camera phone.

Step 2: Download picture to your computer.

Step 3: Display the picture on your LED monitor screen and take a photo of THAT picture with your camera phone. You should position yourself slightly off-center (right, left, up, or down) for best effect.

Step 4: Download the second picture to your computer.

Step 5: Compare the two pictures.

I actually watched the news channel he worked for.
They showed several different pictures.

In some pictures, usually outdoors, he appeared slightly darker.

In studio pictures he appeared slightly lighter.

In pictures, lighting is everything.
The difference between morning sun light, when the shooting occurred, and mid day light can be a big difference.

Based on the pictures used by WDBJ7, the news channel, I see no altering of pictures.
Your opinion may be different.

Good day and may the Almighty Lord bless you and yours.

Channel surfing, I saw the evening report on NBC. The WDBJ station manager said the guy was constantly looking to be offended, and it got to the point that “We had to let him go” - two years previous.

That cameraman had videotaped part of the outburst on the day the guy got fired.

I understand the station management cleared the room his desk was in and had police on hand when they fired him.
They also beefed up security for a while.

He had filed a suit against his employer in Florida 10 years ago claiming discrimination. I heard that the case was dismissed by the court.
Later Fox reported that he had settled the suit.
I’m going with dismissed based on what we know of his temper and attitude.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.