JANUARY 12, 2005
News, busted

The local TV news was in a tizzy. On Thursday, January 6, the live noon broadcasts on WROC (Channel 8) and WHEC (Channel 10) were interrupted, just as they were trying to report on the Highland Hospital power outage.

A man wearing a beige body suit labeled "Invisible Suit" and a man in a mask jumped into the TV stations' live broadcasts. The two men, plus a third masked man with a video camera, were taken into police custody and later released. In a press statement issued later that day, a group called Newsbreakers ("When News Breaks, We Bust It") took credit, saying they are a nonviolent media watchdog group that "temporarily reclaimed the airwaves in the name of the American people."

But WROC disagreed. On the evening news, reporter Elizabeth Harness (who was reporting at noon when the protest took place, a still is pictured above) said, "the group is nothing more than pranksters intent on interrupting local news coverage." And in a story on WROC's website, the station said Harness was assaulted during the protest, that Newsbreakers pushed her into the side of a van while Invisible Suit man danced behind her. (Newsbreakers' own video seems to show that Harness may actually have backed into the van out of discomfort.)

Both WROC reports and a Democrat and Chronicle story indicated that Newsbreakers would not comment on what they were trying to accomplish. Buck Owens, Newsbreakers' senior political correspondent, says that just isn't so. And as soon as he could reach City on a phone line that accepted unidentified calls, he was happy to explain the organization's goals.

The group, he says, is trying to raise a question. "And that question is pretty simple: Are you happy with the job that news, TV news in particular, is doing?" Owens says Newsbreakers, using parody, protest core problems like "overzealous" FCC regulations and corporate ownership of media outlets. The point is "getting people talking about the issue of TV news quality." He points to discussion boards on medialine.com and b-roll.net, where people, reacting to the January 6 pranks, are talking about just that.

Newsbreakers will not tell their real names, whether or not they're based in Rochester, or even what other pranks they're responsible for. Owens sympathetically calls it "an awkward situation."

You can download the videos and get other information at www.newsbreakers.org.

--- Erica Curtis

www.rochester-citynews.com/