Michelle Joann Fields is a very talented, ambitious journalist well-known within the Conservative Media community.
So why did she recently throw Donald Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski under the bus by falsely claiming he assaulted her at a Trump rally when raw uncut video footage shows no clear signs of any assault?
Has anyone made an offer to Michelle she can't refuse in exchange for helping to stop the Trump Political movement so he can't clinch the GOP nomination in July?
Stay tuned.
A few years ago, I was punched in the head three times at the British Press Awards in London.
My assailant was a man named Jeremy Clarkson, then presenter of global TV car show Top Gear.
He was severely intoxicated and very, very angry at a story about his personal life which had appeared in the newspaper I ran at the time.
The third flailing blow crashed into my temple, gouging a small hole from which blood flowed profusely.
At this point, I considered my options.
a) Hit him back.
b) Go home.
c) Call the police to press charges, then phone my lawyer to sue Clarkson.
If I’d gone for option c) then I suspect he’d have been convicted of assault and I’d have ended up with a truck load of cash too.
There were, after all, about 1000 witnesses, all of whom were journalists (which is why I didn’t hit him back..).
But I concluded that on balance, I probably deserved my pummelling and so instead, I stumbled outside and caught a taxi home.
(Clarkson, ironically, was fired from Top Gear last year for punching one of his producers in the head after he failed to provide him with hot food)
My point in retelling this anecdote is that journalism’s a rough old game, and the people – male and female - who choose it for a profession tend to be fairly rough too.
‘News,’ as the great press baron Lord Northcliffe once observed, ‘is something someone somewhere doesn’t want printed.’
Gathering news is thus a precarious pursuit which often requires reporters to work in very difficult, dangerous conditions.
This morning I woke in Los Angeles to breaking news that Donald Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski had been arrested and charged with ‘battery’ over an incident with a female reporter, Michelle Fields.
His alleged crime was to assault Ms Fields as she attempted to interview Trump when he walked away from a news conference in Florida.
Helpfully, the police issued new video of the ‘clash’, illustrating very clearly exactly what happened.
The footage lasts just a few seconds and shows Ms Fields displaying commendable bravura as she approaches Trump to fire questions at him.
Crucially, DailyMail.com has now established from a member of Trump’s Secret Service detail that in the process, she touched Trump twice and was warned by agents to stop.
Lewandowski, walking a few steps behind his boss, saw this happening (he may well have heard the warnings too) and raced forward to prevent her asking more questions and put himself between Trump and the reporter.
At this point, let’s forget the gender of the journalist.
In this glorious age of equality, it shouldn’t matter – right?
Battery is battery – regardless of the sex of the victim.
Lewandowski can be seen putting his arm up to block the journalist. In doing so, he also appears to grab her arm for less than a second as he moves on.
This is all rather different from what Ms Fields herself claimed had happened when she wrote about it for her then employer, Breitbart.com: ‘I was jolted backwards. Someone had grabbed me tightly by the arm and yanked me down. I almost fell to the ground but was able to maintain my balance. Nevertheless I was shaken. Campaign managers aren’t supposed to try to forcefully throw reporters to the ground.’
Oh puh-lease.
I’ve watched the video multiple times and cannot conceive any sensible interpretation that he is committing any kind of deliberate assault.
Part of Lewandowski’s job is to protect Trump from nosey journalists, and that’s exactly what he’s doing.
Fields, let me also be very clear, was also doing her job and if I were her editor, I’d congratulate her on getting so close to her prey, especially as repeatedly touching a presidential front-runner in public when he’s surrounded by Secret Service agents is a very risky thing to do.
But my fulsome praise would very rapidly be replaced by utter incredulity if she then informed me she was going to press charges against Lewandowski for battery.
Particularly given that battery, according to the law, means ‘intentionally touching someone without that person’s will’ – the very same thing we now know Fields did to Trump.
This doesn’t mean I take violence against women lightly. But there has to be some kind of harmful intent surely?
Lewandowski wasn’t trying to hurt Michelle Fields, he was trying to stop her getting to Donald Trump. If one of the Secret Service agents had done it, as they had every right to do given her behaviour, they’d have been applauded for doing their job.
Like every journalist I know, I’ve spent much of my career being pushed, shoved, elbowed and barged in crowded places when trying to get near famous people.
It goes with the territory.
Just as for that special breed of journalists who work in war zones, daily life can include dodging bullets, bombs and grenades.
Some of the toughest journalists in America are women.
Would Barbara Walters, Katie Couric or Diane Sawyer have pressed charges if they’d been in Ms Fields’ position?
Of course they wouldn’t.
They’d have all brushed off Lewandowski’s obstruction and chased back after Trump to try and fire more questions at him.
That’s what real reporters do. They don’t take no for an answer.
It’s hard therefore not to escape the sad conclusion that Ms Fields is hell-bent on having her 15 seconds of fame by turning a very innocuous incident into a national scandal to deliberately embarrass and damage a presidential candidate.
After I tweeted about this today, and had the audacity to suggest Ms Fields was being a big wuss, I was instantly bombarded with vicious abuse – notably from other high profile online journalists.
Olivia Nuzzi, a noisy feminist from the Daily Beast led the way with this simple entreaty: ‘Please go f**k yourself.’
Ben Shapiro, a whiny little brat who quit Breitbart over the way they supposedly failed to defend his colleague, was racist: ‘Go screw yourself you prissy sexist Brit.’
Whilst Simon Maloy, an aesthetically displeasing toad from Salon.com, preferred body-shaming me by saying I was a ‘dough-looking, can’t-tell-where-the-neck-stops-and-chin-starts fop.’
Whatever.
Like I said, journalism’s a rough old game. You dish it out, you have to take it.
But this debate boils down to this: if a male reporter cried ‘battery’ after such a trivial incident, he’d be an absolute laughing stock.
Why should a female reporter be taken any more seriously?
By making such a grotesque mountain of such a tiny molehill, Michelle Fields has embarrassed herself and let down her profession.
Toughen up, young lady – or choose a different job.
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