The most surprising thing about this story is that it got reported at all. The local news station whose reporter was chased off by BLM protesters in Rochester Sunday night posted one image he took with his cell phone saying he’d been attacked:
Demonstrators now attacking us outside the public safety building. pic.twitter.com/VqQybiNskn
— Charles Molineaux (@WHEC_cmolineaux) September 7, 2020
And that was it. His own station didn’t mention it until about 24-hours later and only then because people were sharing video of the incident on social media:
There have been posts on social media claiming there was violence and a knife-wielding mob who attacked a News10NBC reporter.
Many people at the protest Sunday night left with the same impression. Protestors, local leaders and police mostly believe it was peaceful and productive. Chanting and speeches were uninterrupted.
But it wasn’t entirely peaceful just mostly peaceful. Reporter Charles Molineaux said at one point that night he and his security person had been chased off by a group of BLM supporters. He claimed he wasn’t aware anyone in the group had a knife, which is possible since his back was turned at that point. Still, this did happen and it’s odd that the station didn’t consider it noteworthy until it saw other people talking about it online.
There are two clips of this incident. This first one which is a bit longer. It shows Molineaux and his security guy were getting harassed and followed and then things seemed to calm down for a moment before the mob surrounded them again. The “reporter” filming appears to say, “get out of here Nazis” to the two men. Then a few people begin chanting “Go home!” Another person said, “Get the f**k up out of here.”
WHEC reporter Charles Molineaux was attacked & chased by a knife-wielding Black Lives Matter mob during "protests" on Sunday night in Rochester.
His own station ignored the incident & described the night's "protests" as "peaceful" on their front page.
Video of atk was deleted! pic.twitter.com/kb3BLWOSHF
— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) September 7, 2020
The second clip gives a better view of them being chased out of the area. You can see the person with the knife and how close the flag came to hitting the security guard in the back of the head. In fact, someone says something about nearly taking his head off. Just before the clip ends someone says, “Yo, I’m about to kill ‘em, brah.”
According to Molineaux this all stated because he was taking photos with his phone:
News10NBC’s Charles Molineaux was taking pictures with his phone as they were approaching.
Molineaux says he was with a security guard when a few people asked, “What are you doing? Are you doxxing people?”
“First I heard from anybody asking who we were, I said we were local TV news,” Molineaux said. “I didn’t say ‘Channel 10’ because some of the organizers of the protests have been angry at channel 10 for some reason. I didn’t want to go there right away. And I also wasn’t wearing my channel 10 insignia for that reason. So I said local TV news, then eventually did say ‘Channel 10.’”
Antifa goons have been attacking the press for years. Now that antifa has aligned itself under the banner of Black Lives Matter, we have people literally using BLM flags as a weapon. Not terribly surprising but it ought to be news whenever this happens even if, as in this case, no one is hurt.
Here’s Molineaux describing what happened on his own station:
