Brandi Kruse

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Transcript

Man: Hey I’m a peaceful protester, I’m speaking my first amendment rights.

Brandi Kruse in scene: You have every right to be out here and to be filming. 

Brandi Kruse: We were in an incredibly dynamic situation. 

Brandi Kruse in scene: Are you going to listen to me?

Brandi Kruse: I'd already been out there for four hours.  So what was happening in Seattle is  we'd had night after night after night of clashes between police and protesters outside the city's east police precinct. The city made a decision earlier that day to evacuate the east precinct, remove the barricades and just to basically let protesters take over the street. 

Man: Y’all spread misinformation.

Brandi Kruse in scene: You haven’t even heard our report yet.

Brandi Kruse: The police left, you know, not an emergency responder in sight. We went to do what I believe was our 9:00 p.m. live hit 

Brandi Kruse in scene: We’re getting ready to go on, that’s fine. 

Brandi Kruse: The photographer turned the light on. It was like flies to the light. 

Brandi Kruse in scene:  We’ve got two  reporters up  here talking about what’s going on, we’re just covering what you guys are doing , what I don’t want is  him to swear on TV

Man: …Fuck that shit.

Brandi Kruse: At this point, I'd heard in my ear from our producers.

Brandi Kruse in scene:  “Hey Miranda, Miranda, we’ve got, we’ve got...”

Brandi Kruse: I kind of say, “Miranda” who's our producer, and let her know and she sees it. This is being streamed back to the station. So she sees what's happening. And so they kill our hit so we can figure it out. 

Man: You want a protest? 

Brandi Kruse in scene:  Ok, let’s walk up.

Man:  I’m protesting right now...You all not going to get this into space.  Hey boys, this Q13 Fox - don’t let them get this false info out. 

Brandi Kruse in scene: Roll. 

Brandi Kruse: I   told my photographer is, just roll. To keep the camera on.

Man: Fuck these guys…

Brandi Kruse: Because we had a live stream back to the studio so everyone in the production booth could see in real time what was happening. If something goes seriously wrong, they can call police right away. And then two, if something happens that is criminal, we have it on camera.

Man: Q13 Fox News  my ass. Fuck that shit. 

Lisa Cohen: Tell me about what it means to be a Fox affiliate in Seattle.

Brandi Kruse in scene: they can say whatever they want, it’s not a big deal. 

Lisa Cohen: Not necessarily in Seattle, but anywhere, because one of the things I think is that the people that you were dealing with just immediately assumed you were Fox News.

Man: Fuck Donald Trump and fuck Fox News. 

Brandi Kruse: You know, being a FOX affiliate in Seattle is interesting. And I would argue it is different than being a FOX affiliate in other parts of the country. 

Brandi Kruse in scene: Keep rolling.

Brandi Kruse: In Seattle, one of the most progressive cities, we have been treated with a little more hostility than some of our fellow colleagues in TV news.

But we really are so independent in what we decide to cover, how we decide to cover it. 

Brandi Kruse in scene: Don’t touch us ok. 

Brandi Kruse: We're just like any other local news station, you know, whether we're FOX or NBC or CBS.

Woman: You’re telling lies!

Brandi Kruse in scene: I’m not telling any lies.

Brandi Kruse:  I am telling my crew to kind of back up. I'm just hoping to separate us from the situation. 

Unintelligible  yelling. 

Security: Ready to go?

Brandi Kruse: But they just keep following us and sort of encircle us and they're shouting and they want us to leave.

Crowd: Fuck Fox News. Fuck Fox News 

Brandi Kruse in scene: You’re rolling right? Ok

Crowd: Fuck Fox News. 

Man: We’re following you, I don’t know where you’re going. But you better get off the block with that shit. You better go around the corner, you ain’t getting fucking no shots. 

Brandi Kruse in scene: just do me a favor and  don’t touch me. You did touch me. Don’t touch me. 

Brandi Kruse:  So at this point, we're pretty close to the barricades they set up, you know, this perimeter.

Woman: You’re a fucking woman supporting Trump, bitch!

Brandi Kruse in scene: Holy shit. 

Brandi Kruse:  And there's neighborhoods around the precinct.

Woman: How dare you think you’re telling the truth?!

Brandi Kruse: There's homes.

Woman: How dare you!

Brandi Kruse: So we decide we're just going to walk off. And almost immediately we're out of an area where there's any protesters. We're on a dark sidewalk in a residential neighborhood. 

Yelling

Brandi Kruse: And, you know, these people who were shouting at us to get out of there, they didn't want us there,  they're following us. And so, I'm trying to explain to them like, we're going to leave.  And, you know, I've got this woman

Untelligible screaming

Brandi Kruse: She's screaming in my ear the entire time this close. And we're in the middle of a pandemic.

Woman: You’re just a terrible person!

Brandi Kruse:  And so I'm thinking about that, too. Like, I don't want to get Covid out here. 

Lisa Cohen: They were saying some pretty vile things.

Woman: You should be fucking ashamed of yourself!!

Man: Let her do the walk of shame!

Lisa Cohen: It's very personal. 

Woman: You fat ass bitch. Let’s fucking go!

Lisa Cohen:  Do you take it personally?

Brandi Kruse in scene: This way? Ok. 

Woman: You support women? I don’t fucking support you. 

Brandi Kruse : It makes me feel bad for them. It makes me feel bad for them, to be honest. 

Lisa Cohen:  Really? 

Brandi Kruse:Yeah, it does.

Brandi Kruse in scene: Excuse me.

Brandi Kruse: Having covered enough of these protests in Seattle, I would say, by and large, the people who are causing trouble and the people like those who surrounded us, I do think that they are lost young people with no direction who are looking for something to cling to that they believe is important or is going to make them feel important. 

Woman: Remember when Trump let a stripper, er a hooker sorry,  pee on him? 

Brandi Kruse:  I do believe there's probably some level of mental illness among some of them just based on behavior. 

Woman: And then Trump let a hooker  pee on him.

Brandi Kruse:  And so I feel a little bad.

Woman: Trump let a hooker  pee on him. 

Brandi Kruse:  They haven't found a direction in life where they can contribute to society in a meaningful way.

Woman: Trump let a hooker  pee on him.

Brandi Kruse:   You know and I say that, because I did see hundreds and thousands of people who found a way to make their voice heard, to do it peacefully.

Man: We’re occupying this whole neighborhood bitch!

Brandi Kruse:  And that's why I got mad sometimes when people said it was Black Lives Matter protesters who mobbed us. It was not Black Lives Matter protesters. It was a group of, you know, infiltrators who had nothing better to do. 

Lisa Cohen: I mean, people would say these people are really angry because of all the injustice that is going on. And so they are venting. 

Man: Get the fuck out of Seattle!

Lisa Cohen: They are furious. They have good cause to be furious. 

Brandi Kruse: Then why weren't they up with the crowd? You know, why were they hanging around on the perimeter of the protest, of the movement, where people were venting their anger with a bullhorn to a crowd of hundreds? You know, where people were getting a platform; were being put on the news to talk about how angry they were?

You know, I think that's what people don't realize is - we are your avenue to do that. You know, you want to talk about how mad you are about George Floyd. 

Man: You are destroying this country. 

Brandi Kruse: We have a camera. We have tens of thousands of people watching. And rather than do that, you decided to treat someone in a way that now tens of millions of people have seen you behaving. 

Brandi Kruse in scene: So Andy you’re rolling right? 

Brandi Kruse: You know, it didn't matter how far we went. We went a block in one direction, a block in the other direction, totally away from their area. They were still following us. And my security, you know, kind of had their hand on my shoulder.

Brandi Kruse in scene: Look how many people are still following us?

Security: I know!

Brandi Kruse: And we're just trying to remain calm. Um, you know, at one point I'm walking forward. There's a man right in front of my face who's walking backward. He's right here. And is going to back into a tree. 

Brandi Kruse in scene: There’s another thing right here you’re going to trip over.

Lisa Cohen: You seem very calm. Were you calm?

Brandi Kruse: Yeah, in the moment I was calm. There are a couple of moments not on camera, where I was thinking to myself, like, I wish you would touch me right now. Like the man who was walking with his face like this backward, like part of me just honestly, if I'm being completely honest, part of me wanted him to try to do something to me so I could just slug him right in the face. Like, that's really what I was thinking. I know that's so un-journalistic and unprofessional, but I just, I couldn't believe that you would treat a person this way. I just could not believe it. 

So there was a couple of moments where in my head I was about to just lose it on these people. But, you're responsible for everyone that you're with as well, you know, armed guards. And the last thing that I wanted is for something to take a turn. 

Brandi Kruse in scene: guys, I don’t like this walk of shame. We’re going to stop. I’m making a decision. We’re  going to  go back this way. 

Brandi Kruse:  I was thinking, what can I do to get out of this situation? What can I do to get my photographer out of this situation?  You know, we'd been walking around for 20 minutes trying to get this mob away from us and they wouldn't leave. 

Brandi Kruse in scene: Yeah, but I don’t want to do a walk of shame in people’s neighborhoods. That’s not fair to them. 

Brandi Kruse: We were in a residential neighborhood, families with kids.

Brandi Kruse in scene: Uh, maybe back through here? 

Brandi Kruse: You know, I wasn't going to continue to have this mob follow me all throughout the neighborhood. And so when we circled around, we went back to the main area where there wasn't homes.

Brandi Kruse in scene: All this business. 

Woman: You’re lucky you’re cute sweetie!!

Brandi Kruse: We walked through all around this block and end up on the other side of this occupied protest zone. We're kind of in this little concrete enclosed seating area of sorts. So that's when things got really hostile. 

Crowd yells

Brandi Kruse:  People are screaming, 

Man:  Block the camera. I don’t give  a shit, you’re Fox. 

Brandi Kruse:  One of my security guards got really elevated. 

Security: Get back! 

Brandi Kruse:  I tell them, “We will leave, let us leave.”

Security: You’re mobbing the camera!

Brandi Kruse:  They were touching the camera, and kind of trying to block the camera. 

Man: Get the fuck out of here. Get out of here. 

Brandi Kruse in scene: Let me just say something. 

Woman: Let her speak!

Brandi Kruse in scene: Let me just say something. 

Brandi Kruse: A woman hit me in the head with an umbrella. 

Man: Hey, hey.  Yelling . 

Security: Get back 

Brandi Kruse: To me the most troubling part; one of the things that I had a hard time with in the days after that - my photographer is really young. And he's great at his job, like he is a pro. But he had not been in a situation like that before. 

Brandi Kruse in scene: If we could just say something. Andy works hard. I’m the one on the air. If you could just not  be pushing him around and his camera.

Man: Get the fuck out of here. 

Brandi Kruse: And so, knowing that this was happening and was going to happen to us because of me and that he had to endure it as well, was hard because you're not just responsible for yourself. I'm responsible for my photographer, I'm responsible for the security guards in a way, I know that sounds counter, counterintuitive, but — 

Cohen: Well, they wouldn't be there if you weren't there. That's the idea, right?

Brandi Kruse: Right.

Lisa Cohen: So your emotion, as I'm hearing it is, you want to pop someone, so you're angry. Were you scared? 

Brandi Kruse: Was I scared?  I really didn't think that they were, you know, armed or anything like that. You know, I've been mobbed before at protests. And so I thought to myself, they're just going to keep screaming. And then the umbrella thing happened. Somebody got, you know, was pushing the, my photographer's camera.

Crowd yells about camera.

Brandi Kruse: I don't know if I had time to think about it, if I'm being honest with you. It was sort of like - it was like a constant problem solving. 

Brandi Kruse in scene:  So we’re going to stay put until we can, we can leave safely.

Man: Nobody’s going to hurt you but you do need to leave. 

Security: We are trying.

Brandi Kruse: And I found out later on that one of the people in the video had a felony warrant out for their arrest that had to do with firearms. So maybe I was a little naive to think that these were just troubled kids.

Man: Start walking in the direction you are going. 

Brandi Kruse in scene: If you are going to follow us around, we’re not going to keep walking. 

Man: Walk! Walk!

Man: Let em walk. Let em walk. 

Crowd yelling: Walk! Walk! Bye! Bye!

Brandi Kruse: My security guard wants to get us to his vehicle, which is parked just across the street in a parking lot. We can see it from where we are. 

Brandi Kruse in scene: We’re not going there. They will vandalize it. 

Brandi Kruse: But just from my experience covering protests, I told him no. They're going to encircle our vehicle and then we're going to be in a position where they're either going to bash it in with us inside, or we're going to inadvertently run over someone and then we're in a totally different situation.

Man: You need to go. You need to stop filming.

Brandi Kruse in scene: We’ve been trying to leave, we’ve been trying to leave for five blocks. 

Brandi Kruse: And you hear me talking to my photographer off camera. 

Andy: I just caught the firefighters walking outside now.

Brandi Kruse: And then he sort of looks behind us and we see the big glass doors of the firehouse 

Andy: I wonder if we could just go in there.

Security: Go. Go. Yeah, go.

Brandi Kruse: And we actually see the shadows of all these people inside the firehouse watching. 

Brandi Kruse in scene: Um, I don’t think they want us in there.

Brandi Kruse: And then we see one of them go over and open the door.

Andy: Go! Go! 

Brandi Kruse: And Andy’s like “they're going to let us in.” 

Crowd noise 

Brandi Kruse: And we just ran under the door. These people chased us to the firehouse. 

Crowd yelling

Brandi Kruse:  I thought for sure, like they were just going to keep the door closed. And I was so grateful that they let us in there because we just, we couldn't figure out a path out. And that's when, I think, you know, just how hard, you know, and long we were trying to sort of keep it together.

Crowd yelling through the door. 

Brandi Kruse: That's when I sort of - you hear me get a little emotional. I think I had some heavy breathing. 

Loud breathing

Firefighter: Let’s just go in the back of the building .

Lisa Cohen: Has this episode affected you or is this just one of like ten different incidents you've been through? And so it's just one more like the other. Has this particular evening had any kind of effect on you? 

Brandi Kruse: You know, not anymore, but but I will say, so I took a day, two days off after that. The first time I went back in the field, there was a press conference outside the police headquarters downtown. And right when I went to get out of my car, I had a panic attack. I had, like, never had a panic attack like that in my life. And I think it was just the idea of being back out in public. I didn't feel safe. I never felt that way before. 

Lisa Cohen: I think one of the things I've been trying to get people to articulate, which is hard because we all sort of live within our world of journalism, is the idea that this kind of attack on press freedom is not just something that journalists should care about, but something that is dangerous beyond just our own personal safety. And, you know, it's not, it's not that the threat to democracy isn't a valid argument, but it's a little obscure and a little abstract. And I think, you know, your average person just has a hard time wrapping their head around what is it that makes this problematic for anyone other than you and the next person who's going to be hassled by someone? 

Brandi Kruse: Well,  I mean you think about some of the just absolutely profound things that have happened in this country for the past couple of years. You know, the, the siege on the capital, Coronavirus. I mean, imagine going through these times without a fair and impartial media, you know. 

You know, you think of the world of, of online comments. If you go to your social media, like I want people to picture this. You go to a social media and you look at the comments on a post about something political. Now, imagine those comments being really only, your only window into that situation. Um, God, what a mess that would be.

And so I think for Americans, it's really just about finding, I think, a broad slice of media and of journalists that you trust and really understanding their value and trying to imagine your life without that information at your disposal.