So much reported and so much distorted

Quite the pretzel of stupid we're dealing with in this report.

Local left-wing activist Jordan Flaherty led a demonstration last summer celebrating the convictions of five New Orleans police officers in the shooting of unarmed civilians on the Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina. The demonstration was posted on YouTube; Flaherty begins speaking about the convictions about 1:40 into his remarks.

Last week, Flaherty helped to cover the sentencing of the five officers as a reporter for The New York Times. He was credited as a contributor to the newspaper's report.

The gist of this report is that the Times' reporting on the Danziger sentencing has suffered some mystical damage because Campbell Robertson relied on substantiated facts relayed to him by Flaherty who was present in the courtroom. In a perfect world we wouldn't have to even entertain such monumental stupidities as this theorem that humans having opinions about things automatically invalidates facts they are witness to. In the world we live in, however, monumental stupidities seem to under-gird the fundamental tenets of our establishment politics and journalism. So the NYT, for no particularly good reason, has to apologize for including verified facts provided by an eyewitness in its reporting. But that's not what I want to clear up about this story.

Instead I need to point out that the Times-Picayune reporter relaying this non-story to us has mischaracterized the nature of the protest event Flaherty addressed last summer. The YouTube video of Flaherty cited in the report is clearly labeled "Jordan Flaherty - ALEC Protest Rally - New Orleans 5 Aug 2011" Flaherty was speaking to a (small) group of marchers assembled to protest the Koch-funded political lobbying organization known as the American Legislative Exchange Council which was meeting in New Orleans that day. It was not, as the T-P reporter says, "a demonstration last summer celebrating the convictions of five New Orleans police officers."

By coincidence the Danziger verdict had just been announced that day as well but Flaherty's speech to the ALEC group was still wildly off-topic and a counterproductive act of self-important grandstanding. I can verify all of this because I was a witness myself and remarked upon the idiocy of Flaherty's speech at the time.

I was disappointed in Flaherty's behavior specifically because he had blunted the purpose of the ALEC protest by injecting his unrelated bluster. Now thanks to him, and thanks to the inability of the un-named T-P reporter to even read the title of a YouTube video, the purpose of that march has been erased altogether. But since that anonymous T-P reporter is a "disinterested" observer instead of an opinionated witness like myself or Flaherty, I guess his/her version of events is the one that counts.

Update: Tracie Washington gives them the whatfor in the comments.