Several years ago, there was coverage of a trial that I was watching with my wife on a day that the jury was about to begin deliberations.
The on-scene reporter had a forensic expert that she was about to begin interviewing and the poor expert got about three words into her first answer and all of a sudden the reporter runs off the set like Godzilla is chasing her. My wife and I looked at each other like we were confused as to what is going on.
As it turns out, the defense attorneys were walking to lunch to wait out the verdict. This lunatic reporter ran across the street to gawk at them eating lunch. It was the damndest thing I have ever seen.
A Voice of America reporter has been reassigned and taken off the White House beat after she “tried to ask questions of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo,” according to two fellow journalists at the organization. Fake news, as always. What actually happened is she chased Pompeo down the hall shrieking like a maniac. Totally unprofessional.
Patsy Widakuswara, who has covered the White House for VOA since 2018, shouted questions at Pompeo after he gave a speech Monday and sat for a question and answer session carried out by VOA director Robert Reilly.
In a video posted on her Twitter account, Widakuswara can be heard asking Pompeo what he is doing to repair the U.S. reputation after last week’s storming of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob and if he regrets saying after the election that there would be a second Trump term. Pompeo did not answer her questions as he walked out.
The nation’s top diplomat @SecPompeo ignoring my questions about what he is doing to restore US reputation and whether he regrets saying there will be a second Trump administration. pic.twitter.com/8pcP9lRQ5a
— Patsy Widakuswara (@pwidakuswara) January 11, 2021
Widakuswara was removed from her White House assignment later on Monday and was supposed to be the radio pool reporter on Air Force One for a scheduled trip Tuesday. VOA ordered her not to go on the trip, two journalists at VOA familiar with the matter told NBC News.
VOA journalist Steve Herman, who also covers the White House, tweeted that he was dismayed at his colleague’s “demotion” merely for doing her job and said it “amounted to political interference in the broadcaster’s newsroom in breach of the outlet’s editorial independence under its founding charter.”