Monday, September 24, 2007

BUTT-FUCKED BY WBAL NEWS


If you look that the post directly below, you'll see pictures that may seem familiar. If so, it's because you saw them on WBAL's newscast. Yup, they stole them from this site.
See, I was lucky enough to to live in close proximity to the raided stores and home, so I got pictures as the feds swarmed the place like cockroaches at a greasey spoon and posted them. I just a matter of an hour or two, I got this:

"I'm a manager with WBAL-TV in Baltimore. I saw the photos you posted
concerning this morning's raids in Snow Hill of two businesses and a home.
I would like to know if we may use these photos on air today as part if our
story.
You may phone me at 410-338-6501 or respond to this e-mail.

Thank you,
Beverly Epstein"

So I called Ms Beverly and we had a nice talk. She wanted to use my photos and I told her they were for sale, and terms of the sale would include a single use for broadcast, photo credit and a prohibition against using, selling or transferring the photos to any other news organization. Okay, she said, she would call me back. Never did hear from her, but on the six 0'clock show, right there under the byline of the Intrepid Investigative Reporter Jane Miller, were my pictures. So I called her ass up to say WTF, over. Well, the Reader's Digest version of the story is that she got real defensive and said I never mentioned the pics were for sale. I assured her I mentioned it at least twice and that we had never agreed to a sale price and that's why she was going to call me back.... Silence on her end of the line indicated were at an impasse. I asked to speak to the managing editor and she told me she is the ME. Who's her boss... that would be Michelle Butt. Three phone messages later and still no response from Ms Butt. ... And this is causing me to feel like I just got Butt fucked by WBAL.
All this is made worse by the fact that five minutes after I fot off the phone with Little Miss Beverly, the first time, their helicopter was hovering over my house taking pictures of the stores where the raids had been.