The hero of our story is Thomas Fowler, a sophomore at the University of Califoria Davis, who shot a cell phone video Friday, Nov. 18, of a cop pepper spraying student demonstrators on the UC Davis campus.
Another hero is reporter Kevin Fagan of the San Francisco Chronicle, who tracked Fowler down at the scene of last week's pepper spray incident and got the story of how his video went viral and got 1.7 million views (as of Monday). Fowler told Fagan:
"I wasn't involved in the Occupy thing, but I'd just gotten off work at the student center and thought I'd go over to check it out," Fowler said Tuesday. "The cops being there seemed like kind of a big deal, so I shot it."
As the incident ended he showed the video to a friend, "and he said, 'Hey, you should put that on YouTube,' " Fowler said.
That took two minutes. Before the weekend was over, he was fielding calls from dozens of places where it was being aired, from Australia and Spain to CNN. Armchair photo editors have grafted a video still of an officer spraying the chemical irritant onto countless iconic images, from "The Wizard of Oz" to "The Last Supper."
"I guess I'm an accidental journalist," Fowler said. "It's pretty cool seeing my stuff on the Net, and now I'm more sympathetic to the Occupy cause. But I'm sticking with biochemistry."
1 comment:
Once again an example of how new technology has put the job of watchdog into every ones hands. Also a lesson to all no matter where you are or who you are someone has a camera. We all accountable for our actions.
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