Minnesota Independent: News. Politics. Media. » Media

‘They demonize me!’: Bradlee Dean talks about MnIndy reporting of his ministry

Andy Birkey — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:42:38 +0000

Bradlee Dean. Image: YouTube

Bradlee Dean, the founder of You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International, told the attendees of the group’s “Appeal to Heaven” fundraiser that the media “demonizes” him for bringing his fiery brand of Christianity into public schools.

“What is morality? The fruit of Christ! The fruit of morality is Jesus Christ! That’s why we do high school assemblies,” he said during the fundraiser, which included a videotaped message from Rep. Michele Bachmann.

“Again, people are demonizing me right now, and I think we have a couple of those folks here tonight,” he said. (The Minnesota Independent notified the ministry I would be attending). “Thank you for making me famous! You don’t understand the spiritual world at all, brother!”

He continued, “They demonize me, they take me out of context. I have yet to have one person in media say what I said line-by-line, precept upon precept. They try to demonize the truth because they want to justify themselves.”

Then Dean, stating that he “loves” gays and lesbians, directed his comments at this reporter. “I want to say this because I have love and compassion for the homosexual community. The homosexuals are being exploited by tyrants for their own use.”

“You be sure, liberal people back there,” he said, gesturing to the table where I sat. “Tell them I said so, tell them I love them enough to tell the truth. Tell them it’s not a hate crime to warn them!”

The crowd roared with applause.

Then he concluded:

“To the liberal whackjobs that are here: I love you! Put that in your paper! Put that in your paper! All right?”

Bachmann has an ‘aggressive plan’ to get herself in the media

Andy Birkey — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 12:09:18 +0000

Why is Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann all over the media? Because she wants to be. That’s according to Bachmann’s new media director, Dave Dziok. She has supersized her communications staff in order to put herself out there — and out there she’s been: In the last nine days, she’s done six national cable news appearances.

“We are in a great position to have a three-staff communications team in our office, which is rare for a freshman, but it’s an aggressive plan that the congresswoman wanted to pursue,” Dziok said in a radio interview earlier this year.

He said that Mary Vought, her former communications director, “was instrumental in getting the Congress member all this great media attention.”

Of Bachmann’s critics he said, “Everybody wants to bring up the couples of gaffes that have happened. But when it comes to the issues, I don’t think there’s a better communicator out there.”

“She’s got a lot of substance, and she knows what she’s talking about,” he said.

Bankruptcy means Strib can stiff contributors

Paul Schmelzer — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:12:12 +0000

How bad have the Star Tribune’s woes gotten? If a tweet by David de Young is any indicator, bad enough that they won’t honor commitments to contributors. The founder of the music site “How Was the Show?,” de Young writes that the newspaper sent him a copy of its “Commencement of Chapter 11″ bankruptcy papers, “which forbids me to ask them for the $75 they owe me for a photo I sold them in 2008.” A week ago, MinnPost’s David Brauer reported that as many as 11 buyout takers were told that their checks would bounce if cashed, and a few days ago, he followed up with news that seven veteran staffers who took buyouts aren’t getting the amount of cash they were promised.

De Young hasn’t yet replied to my query for this piece.

Minnpost’s Blog Cabin the new blog police?

Andy Birkey — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:33:10 +0000

The Blog Cabin, MinnPost’s new blog about blogs, is run by new hire Justin Piehowski (formerly of KSTP). Its name bears a striking resemblance to another political blog: Blog Cabin, the blog of national gay group, the Log Cabin Republicans.

Piehowski has vowed to reject blogs who are too harsh and to lay down the law on irresponsible blogging:

Now, being a blogger with a worldwide audience also comes with a lot of responsibility. We’ve all heard at least one story about a blogger who has misled, misrepresented or flat-out lied on their blog.

Simply put, there’s a lot of garbage in the blogosphere and I won’t hesitate to call out a Minnesotan who blogs recklessly.

The people-powered media revolution is knocking at our door, friends. It’s time to peak between the curtains.

That, of course, led to harsh criticism from bloggers. A Blue Stem Prairie’s Ollie Ox:

MinnPost has hired a blog nanny to watch over those of us who presumed to set up blogs without asking permission. Yes, gentle readers, the Blog Cabin is here to award gold stars to those nice people who fit the rules of high-quality journalism and to take naughty posters out to the blog woodshed.

In the upcoming weeks we’ll find out which Minnesota bloggers make the cut and which ones will be shamed into blogger obscurity.

Bachmann: 23 TV appearances since Sept. 1, 0 public meetings in her district since being elected

Andy Birkey — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:04:05 +0000

Rep. Michele Bachmann is now notorious for her appearances on cable TV news programs, having sparked significant controversy with her recent “anti-America” statements on MSNBC. But as Politico reports, Bachmann, a Republican, has done 23 major television appearances since the beginning of September — far more than any member of Minnesota’s congressional delegation. How does a freshman Congress member from the minority party find herself in the limelight so often?

Easy. You and I pay for it.

Bachmann has built an impressive communications staff in Washington, D.C. She has a press secretary for national media, a press secretary for local media and a “new media director” who harnesses “the networking and outreach power of the internet.”

According to congressional salary data, none of Minnesota’s Congress members has more than one press secretary. Minnesota’s most influential members, Democratic Reps. James Oberstar and Collin Peterson, who chair the House Transportation and Agriculture committees, respectively, each have only one press secretary.

Bachmann’s fellow freshman colleagues, Democratic Reps. Keith Ellison and Tim Walz, each have just one communications lead, and Walz has combined the communications director and district director positions into one entity.

Bachmann’s critics say she has engaged in a self-promotion campaign at the expense of her constituents in the 6th District. In September, the DFL Party criticized Bachmann for her four appearances on CNN’s “Larry King Live” while she was refusing to respond to an invite to a candidate forum in Scandia.

Instead of town hall meetings and constituent gatherings, Bachmann spent the last year engaging in tele-town hall meetings, a system for cold-calling members of the district.

She hasn’t held one public meeting in the district since being elected in 2006, instead opting for meetings with chambers of commerce or relying on robo-calling.

However, she has been on “Larry King Live” seven times in the last three months. Not to mention Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, Bloomberg, Fox’s Neil Cavuto and CNBC’s Squawk Box.

I tried to reach Bachmann’s office and campaign for a list of public events in the district in just the past two months, in the off chance I’m wrong about the lack of public appearances she’s made in the district. None of her three communications staffers has returned my request.

In Minnesota TV advertising, McCain outspent Obama 5-1 in last week of September

Steve Perry — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:37:34 +0000

If you're curious to know how confident the Obama campaign feels about its widening lead in Minnesota, here's a dollars-and-cents clue. According to figures released by the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project late last week, the presidential campaigns of John McCain and Barack Obama spent over $28 million nationally on TV advertising during the week of Sept. 28-Oct. 4. And there's an interesting anomaly in the Minnesota totals: Among states identified as Midwestern battlegrounds -- by UWAP's reckoning, these are Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania (?) and Wisconsin -- Minnesota is one of only two where McCain outspent Obama (the other is Iowa), and by a whopping margin of almost exactly 5-1 ($608,000 - $121,000).

Headline of the day: Yup, that’s how you do it

Steve Perry — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:43:14 +0000

Must-see video: Portland, Maine TV journo clearly did not get McCain memo on ‘deference’

Steve Perry — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:48:25 +0000

The thrust of the McCain campaign’s plan for gaffe-proofing its standard-bearer is to make sure his only unscripted press exposure is with local newspapers and TV stations. (And, where Sarah Palin is concerned, to warn all comers that “respect and deference” are due.)

It’s a plan that’s served them well, but occasionally it backfires. As in this clip of a McCain interview by Rob Caldwell of WCSH-TV in Portland, Maine, the local NBC affiliate. If a network news hand got so rough with McCain, there would be censure and possibly demotion in his/her future. [Via Americablog]

See the video below.

Cataloguing the RNC’s journalist detainees

Anna Pratt — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:24:48 +0000

ABC News crew wears gas masks while filming the Funk the War group, in front of MPR on 7th Street. Photo: T. Roman

Of the 800-plus people who were arrested or detained in conjunction with RNC protests, a good chunk of them — 46, by our count — were members of the news media. Media representatives in town to cover the events, from both big and small presses, were slapped with citations and pending charges ranging in severity, including unlawful assembly, obstructing the legal process, misdemeanor interference with a peace officer and felony to riot plus other riot pretenses. (Notably Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was jailed along with two of the show’s producers.) Many others who weren’t arrested or detained endured pepper-spray and other arms used for crowd-control.

MnIndy has compiled a list of journalists who were detained or arrested, including some preemptively, culled from news reports and sources, including the Ramsey County sheriff’s department’s booking roster. Let us know if anyone is unaccounted for and we’ll add them to the list.

Journalists detained/arrested:

Tom Aviles, WCCO photojournalist

Charlie B, MTV Think blogger (full last name unknown)

Anita Braithwaite, New York-based Glass Bead Collective

Wendy Binion, Portland IndyMedia

Andy Birkey, Minnesota Independent

Geraldine Cahill, The Real News

Eileen Clancy, I-Witness Video, a New York-based media collective

Paul Demko, Minnesota Independent

Amy Forliti, Associated Press reporter

Emily Forman, I-Witness video group

Ben Garvin, Pioneer Press photographer

Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! host

Art Hughes, Public News Service

Suzanne Hughes, The Uptake, volunteer coordinator

Malisa Jahn, I-Witness video group

Ted Johnson, Variety managing editor

Olivia Katz, Glass Bead Collective

Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now! producer

Alice Kalthoff, MyFoxdfw.com editor

Jon Krawczynski, Associated Press reporter

Joseph La Sac, Pepperspray Productions journalist

Brian Madigan, Minneapolis freelancer

Ed Matthews, University of Kentucky photojournalism student

Jonathan Malat, KARE-11 photojournalist

Stephen Maturen, Minnesota Daily assistant picture editor

Britney McIntosh, University of Kentucky photojournalism student

Matt Nelson, University of Iowa student

Jason Nicholas, New York Post freelance photographer

Mark Ovaska, Rochester freelance photographer

Christopher Patton, Editorial board member of The Daily Iowan

Elizabeth Press, Democracy Now!

Matt Rourke, Associated Press photographer

Sheila Regan, TC Daily Planet

Lambert Rochfort, Pepperspray Productions journalist

Seth Rowe, Sun Newspapers, St. Louis Park community editor

Jeff Schorfheide, Madison, Wis. Badger-Herald photographer

Mark Skinner, University of Nevada Las Vegas Rebel Yell reporter

Ania Smolenskaia, The Real News

Matt Snyders, City Pages

Nicole Salazar, Democracy Now! producer

Vlad Teichberg, New York-based Glass Bead Collective

Dean Treftz, U-Wire, national college news service

Nathan Weber, photographer, Chicago-area freelancer

Tony Webster, Twin Cities independent media professional

Jim Winn, University of Kentucky journalism adviser

John P. Wise, MyFox national editor

Dawn Zuppelli, Rochester IndyMedia

‘More of the Same’ Center: Dems plan RNC counter-offensive

Paul Schmelzer — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:13:28 +0000

The Democratic National Committee is coming to the Republican National Convention — or at least, across the street. Hoping to keep a post-DNC bump, the party is setting up a media office across from the Xcel Energy Center to serve as a rapid-response center for countering whatever goes on inside. The “More of the Same” center — to be accessible via justmoreofthesame.com — will host media spokespeople, two dozen fact-checkers (who’ll fisk every GOP speech) and a satellite truck to transit interviews anywhere in the world. And in addition to its already-running bus-shelter postering, the DNC will have a mobile billboard that’ll “stalk” John McCain, the New York Times reports. It’s a strategy similar to the one the Republicans are using in Denver, only closer. The GOP’s response team was housed a mile from the convention venue, but still managed to get Minnesota’s Tim Penny in to bash the candidate of his former party, Barack Obama.