Rewriting history: Bill O’Brien denies he once banned Concord Monitor reporters from press events
The contentious relationship between O’Brien and the Monitor came to a head in July, 2012 after the paper published a political cartoon that depicted O’Brien with a Hitler-like mustache.
A few weeks later, Monitor reporters Matt Spolar and Annmarie Timmins were denied entry to a well-publicized media availability in the speaker’s state house office. Videos taken from inside and outside the office captured Timmons being blocked by Shannon Bettencourt, the speaker’s assistant, as other members of the press streamed by.
When asked why the reporters were denied entry, Bettencourt replied, “You know the reasons.” She subsequently released an email statement that read, “When the Concord Monitor proves they have chosen to become a responsible media outlet, we’ll be happy to invite them to future media events.” The statement referenced the cartoon as “one example of irresponsible choices made by the Monitor.”
O’Brien rewrites history
In a recent interview with Free State videographer David Ridley, O’Brien denied he played any role in banning the reporters from the event. “The Concord Monitor says you banned them from one of their news conferences a few years ago. Did you really do that?” Ridley asked.
“No,” replied O’Brien. “The staff made a mistake in not including someone in a conversation I was having with reporters… I wouldn’t do that.”
Ridley asked, “You would have let them in?”
“If I had known,” answered O’Brien.
“You just didn’t know they were out there?” asked Ridley.
“Yeah,” O’Brien replied.
“But they were there,” Ridley continued. “They tried to get in and were denied, correct?”
"I think so,” O’Brien answered, “from what I heard afterwards, yeah.”
‘Democratic propagandists’
That, of course, is a very different story that the one O’Brien told at the time. Two weeks after the reporters were banned from the press availability, O’Brien blasted the paper for being “Democratic propagandists” and acknowledged to Patch reporter Ryan O’Connor that he acted in response to the paper’s aggressive reporting.
“It wasn’t just the cartoon,” O’Brien said. “What has become apparent is that they have a political agenda and it maps very neatly with what the Democrat agenda is, to distract people from the issues, to talk process, to talk personality, to implement Saul Alinsky‘s Rule No. 5, which is to demonize and marginalize the leadership of the opposition.”
“The decision not to include them in the press availability,” O’Brien continued, “was, in part, to point out that this is a media outlet that has decided that they’re going to propagandize for one side of the political debate and we’re not going to deal with them as if they’re doing anything else.”