As Donna posted below, the Chapel Hill Police acted responsibly and admirably to arrest members of the Occupy Chapel Hill protest who had taken over private property downtown.
Taking their cues from leftists in European cities such as Amsterdam and Berlin, the Occupiers decided that since this piece of private property was empty it was perfectly reasonable for them to become squatters in a private individual’s building.
I note with interest this particular sentence (my emphasis added) in today’s story by Katelyn Ferral, who, it should be noted, was among those arrested:
The group included anarchists, some affiliated with Occupy Chapel Hill, but the group did not represent the Occupy Chapel Hill encampment downtown.
I want to know, did Ferral take a poll in order to make her statement of bald fact, that the squatters “did not represent” the Occupy movement? Did someone assert this to her and she simply forgot the attribution? Or was this just her gut reaction?
Reporters should be wary of unattributed statements of fact in a story. If you’re commenting on the weather, then you don’t need a source. But if you’re speculating on motives and representation, you need a source. Note this sentence, which preceded the one above (my emphasis added):
At a press conference Monday, Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue and Chapel Hill Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt said the group was distributing riot literature and could have posed a threat to officers.
While Ferral insisted on stating as fact that the squatters did not represent the Occupy movement, she felt the need to attribute to Kleinschmidt the assertion that the literature being distributed was “riot literature,” even after being told by Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue that the literature “included instructions on how to flip a police car, break windows, and use fire to create space between police and suspects.”
I think it was appropriate that she attribute the characterization of the literature to Kleinschmidt and Blue. It was not appropriate for her to divine out of thin air that the squatter action was not representative of the Occupy movement. The reader is left to wonder whether Ferral, being unable to find anyone to say it, decided to say it herself.
