Usually from the CSPAN television of these speakers, most of them rant incoherently, and so they couldn’t be dangerous even if they wanted to be. They’re just obviously ineffectual people speaking to people who are too embarrassed to leave — who the reporters thereupon create their own urban legends. While the headline suggested the speaker got a standing ovation from this audience, the article states that half of the audience gave her a standing audience — and did not say what the other half was doing.
I believe this was the reporter’s first professional article after editing the student newspaper at Standford University, where in his own words, he was a living legend of journalism.
In modern journalism these days, it’s very difficult to tell where the story really begins and ends — and the reporter’s own shameless self-promotion for their own Nobel/Pulitzer Prize begins.