VP Biden Apologizes for Deleting Student Reporter’s Photos

The office of the Vice President issued an apology to a University of Maryland student for staffers having forcefully deleted photographs the young man took of Biden at a public event.

Jeremy Barr, a student reporter for University of Maryland’s Capital News Service, attended Biden’s announcement of another new domestic violence initiative but sat in a section meant for the general audience, not reporters. The reporter was seen taking photos of the Vice President speaking from the podium. After the speech, he was confronted by a Biden staffer who demanded that he delete the photos and stood by making sure he did so.

In short order, Lucy Dalglish, dean of the University of Maryland’s journalism school, filed a formal complaint with Biden’s office.

Biden’s office claimed it was all a mistake by an over zealous staffer.

Insisting the Biden’s office has a policy of “open press events,” Biden spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said that it was just an “unfortunate mistake” made by a staffer “who does not regularly interact with the press.”

“Once we learned about it I immediately apologized to the Dean of the College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, the reporter involved and to the newspaper. It will never happen again,” Barkoff said

Dean Dalglish said the action was “clearly illegal,” but was satisfied with the immediate apology.

“Somebody really screwed up. The vice president’s office probably knows that it’s illegal and certainly knows that it was a stupid thing to do,” Dalglish said.

Last March, Biden’s staff was criticized for stuffing a journalist from the Orlando Sentinel in a closet during a Democrat fundraiser he was attempting to cover.

Shortlink:

Posted by Warner Todd Huston on March 21, 2013.
Filed under Barack Obama, Big government, Culture Of Corruption, Democrats, Liberals, Media.
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago-based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com and BigJournalism.com, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, RightPundits.com, StoptheACLU.com, Human Events Magazine, among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events.He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book "Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture" which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions, EMAIL Warner Todd Huston: igcolonel .at. hotmail.com"The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it." --Samuel Johnson

You can leave a response or trackback to this entry