Occupy Oakland Responds to The Shadow

We have received the following response from Occupy Oakland in response to our earlier posting of the false accusations made against ABC7 news anchor Kristen Sze and NBC Bay Area anchor Janelle Wang.  We now post their response in full:

From the occupy Oakland media team:
We are sorry about the false accusations. We have the episode on tape, and have decided to leave the issue alone, and not release the tape. Apologies to those who were falsely accused. Everything moves very fast here. Yes, the anchor you mention was asian [sic], and we did faulty research on the woman, and came up with two wrong people in a row. Totally lame on our behalf. We are very sorry for that. Not being professional journalists and being under the threat of constant PTSD-inducing attacks i think were the main culprit of our blunder.

I have never seen a professional news representative act in such an unprofessional way. We have decided there are more important issues at hand, and to not release the tape of the incident. The scene down there was very tense. A reporter did in fact assault someone however. She spun on her heels after accidentally knocking over candles, turned towards a man who had said somthing [sic] i did not hear, and went over to him and pushed him rather hard, and then ran across the street to flee from people chasing her down. We did not make it up. We just absolutely screwed up the ID of the person, bringing up an issue of racial profiling that I personally consider irrelevant and over reactive. Which we too may be guilty of in this case. (over reaction) Lets all drop it I say.

The Shadow's response to this statement:

We are satisfied with this and know that you have been in contact with both Kristen and Janelle through Twitter.  In terms of this being an issue of racial profiling -- that was a charge that we never specifically stated, only a theory.

We also appreciate your not releasing the video of this incident, we agree that you have bigger worries right now and there is no need to fan the flames on this.

The Shadow thanks you for this response and we will not comment further on this incident.

Good night and good luck.