~>How Fake News Almost Got Me Killed At The G20<~
As some of you may know I am covering, like I always do- the annual G20 meeting & this year it's in Hamburg Germany.
Some 100,000 protesters are expected, with 8,000+ being violent. To counter them there are over twenty thousand police in the streets of Hamburg.
I've seen a significant number of Antifa protesters since arriving, and yesterday I was jumped by Antifa while we were observing the protests. I don't want to make a big deal out of this. As a journalist, this is in my job description, but the details surrounding how everything unfolded are seriously alarming.
I now have people following me around with my photo and looking for me. Saying that they will seriously hurt and possibly kill me all because of an incident spurred by another journalist.
While I was watching the protesters, a credentialed photographer started taking photos of myself and those next to me, including people like Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, and two other journalists- Marcus DiPaola and Max Bachman.
I soon discovered that these images were taken by a by a man named Sören Kohlhuber who is part of the fully credentialed press at the G20. He is also an author, who has written a book called "Deutschland, deine Nazis" or in English "Germany, your Nazis" the back cover of which describes him as "As a freelance journalist, Soren Kohluber observes the developments of the right-wing scene in Germany and regularly documents their marches.
The book reflects his experiences with dealing with neo-Nazi invasions in 2014, with a focus on the regional differences between the neo-Nazis and the activists."
The book he is holding "Retrofieber" apparantly is the continuation of his previous work.
Sören appears to work for several news publications in Germany. He tweeted out a photo of myself and others saying that "we were identitarians and fascists." He then forwarded them to Antifa. He also tweeted individual images of us, all the while continuing to call us fascists.
Then, he deleted some of these tweets, but only after sending them to the more radical protest groups in Hamburg. We soon started getting tweets from people warning us: "people are looking for you."
You know from my previous work that, I am anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian, and anti-status quo. However, this journalist still decided, without any fact-checking or investigation, to describe me as a fascist Nazi. This is "fake news" since I am neither of these things.
I confront politicians, I call out world leaders, for their horrible policies. Politically I am not right or left wing; I am for the truth.
It wasn't just me that this happened to, it also happened to Marcus DiPaola who works for heavy.com and Max Bachman who is an independent reporter that does freelance work for newspapers here in Germany.
It was then I found out from Marcus that there are groups of people walking around with our photos on their phones- looking for us.
We then noticed that we were being followed by a group of around ten men, who then tried to shoulder bump us, they went after Max, punching him a couple of times. This was when I told Max to run; we started trying to get away from the situation after he had been attacked. As we were trying to get away, other people in front, started punching, pelting us, throwing us to the ground and kicking us.
Physically I am doing alright; I got a little bit of a shiner and a couple of knots on the back of my head. Max was left bloodied after the situation, and he got some help from the paramedics who bandaged up his elbows and knees.
Afterward, we left and went thirty minutes outside of the city. We were still followed by other protestors and were told to leave the area immediately, or we would be more seriously injured or murdered by them!
Then to add insult to injury, the police also decided to spray their water cannons on us as we were leaving, then said they couldn't help us-that we're on our own.
Marcus was attacked in an another event, here is a link to his video.
The "credentialed journalist" Sören Kohlhuber also tweeted Lauren Southern's location and the fact that she had changed her shirt. Luckily she had just left, and they could not find her. On her way out though, she spotted people who were trying to track and get her location so they could attack her.
Kohluber also tweeted his dislike for international journalists, like myself who like to broadcast live.
I would like to ask him a question. Why would you lie about me, why would you spread "fake news" about me, and two other innocent people, who clearly aren't identitarians or Nazis or fascists?
I also hope that no harm comes to the journalist that did this. Vengeance won't solve or fix anything, but ultimately I just want to know why- did he do this?!
I'm feeling let down over how this situation unfolded. Physically I am doing alright, just a couple scrapes and bruises, a bunch of bumps on the back of my head because I was then hit by some unknown object(s). I am okay though.
In the future I am going to continue reporting, this is not going to stop me, and I will be taking even better security precautions.
If you want to see me do that, and you want to support this independent media organization, please consider going on patreon.com/wearechange. I love you guys very much, and I apologize for the lack of coverage here.
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