If you need any proof about how depraved and dishonest left wing media can be, wait until you read this story. Occupy Wall Street activist Sean McKeown reports that he had informed a producer who allegedly worked with Mr. Olbermann on his now-cancelled Current TV show about alleged rape and sexual assaults in the fall of 2011. Olbermann not only failed to report these attacks on his TV show, but went on to deny such attacks had occurred.
On February 13th, 2012, Olbermann attacked the Occupy Unmasked film by Stephen K. Bannon. In that segment, Olbermann attacked Andrew Breitbart along with the film and referred to rapes as “claims”:
The latest hit piece is called Occupy Unmasked. Using sound bites taken out of context as well as negative news reports, director Stephen Bannon attempts to paint the Occupy Movement as a left-wing conspiracy run amuck. A place where drugs, anarchy and — as Breitbart claims — rape reign supreme.
When called out on this seeming denial of rapes at Occupy, Olbermann went on the offensive. From his (currently protected) Twitter account, Keith Olbermann said to Washington Times writer Henry D’Andrea:
@TheHenry No Occupy rapes, no cover-up, no apology, no retraction, and no credibility for your Moonie-owned “newspaper.”
And also said:
Love this. @AndrewBreitbart goes nuts, hallucinates about some imaginary wave of rapes at Occupy, & a bunch of guys w/no necks Tweet-grunt,
In response to Olbermann’s flat-out denial of rapes at Occupy, I wrote an article that gave over a dozen incidences of reported rapes, sexual assaults and other sexual offenses linked to the Occupy movement. In turn, Olbermann used his Countdown show as a way to double-down on his claim that were no rapes or sexual assaults with a slight modification. This time he claimed that Occupiers were the victims not the perpetrators. Olbermann used a segment of his February 15th show to ‘refute’ the lists I’d put together and I quickly published a point-by-point response.Here is what Keith Olbermann said on February 15, 2012 in a segment on his show and an identical piece on DailyKos.com entitled Debunking Breitbart’s “Occupy Rape List”:
It turns out Breitbart and his people have padded this, by listing some stories twice. And in nearly every case, Breitbart’s crew has twisted nearly every one of the allegations in the stories. The idea seems to have been to make as long a list as possible, and assume that your supporters will never bother to link through to the stories, let alone follow-up to find their true outcomes.Those who do bother will find Mr. Breitbart and his colleagues, are lying:
And then goes on to mention the Zuccotti Assaults:
Number ten: New York City. An Occupy protestor is assaulted in her tent.Number eleven: New York. It’s the same story as Number ten. He has again listed one twice. Incidentally, despite the November reports claiming the Occupy food tent worker would shortly be charged with something besides sexual abuse, there are no stories on the net indicating this has yet occurred.
You will note that, despite being on a list that Mr. Olbermann says are ‘lies’, he doesn’t come out and say that these specific claims are lies. Mr. Olbermann doesn’t point out that the claims are true, either. Nor does he indicate that there were multiple assaults by the same suspect, which is why it made the list twice.This is a significant omission because Mr. Olbermann’s show was reportedly informed about the New York assaults months earlier. According to an Occupier named Sean McKeown who worked with both Occupy’s media and security teams, McKeown was sending reports to an unnamed producer on Countdown whom he believed worked closely with Mr. Olbermann. Further, he says that this alleged producer was actually spending time in the park at the time the assaults were revealed. We’re talking about the suspect in those assaults, a man named Tonye:
I have been unable to find any indication Mr. Olbermann or Current TV ever made any mention of the arrest or the sexual assaults at Occupy Wall Street. Nor did Olbermann ever mention his staff was aware of the assaults when he made his ‘no rape’ comments. If McKeown’s account is accurate, such an omission isn’t just bad journalism, but actually put the women who were part of Occupy at danger.Developing…
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