Community Protests KTVU's Shameless Fawning Over Mehserle

The Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant held a protest Monday, November 1st at KTVU headquarters in Oakland. At issue was the station’s shamelessly biased coverage and use of the airwaves to advocate on behalf of former BART police officer and convicted killer Johannes Mehserle, on the eve of his sentencing in this Friday, November 5th.

In the Coalition's press release, Rachel Jackson of the New Year's Movement stated, “Rita Williams’ recent ‘interview’ of Mehserle was not that of an authentic reporter, but a shockingly dishonest, untruthful PR stunt with the intention of creating a more sympathetic picture of Mehserle for his sentencing judge, Robert Perry, and for KTVU’s viewers. We believe Ms. Williams or whomever made the decision to give this coverage to Mehserle should be fired.”

During the conference, community members representing a diversity of grassroots organizations denounced KTVU's reprehensible disregard for Oscar's friends and family – who are can't even turn on the TV to watch a ball game or check the weather without being traumatized anew – and pointed to the inherent hypocrisy in the station's fawning over Mehserle. Cat Brooks of the ONYX Organizing Committee pointed out, that if KTVU were authentically interested in presenting convicts in a compassionate light, the station could have chosen to profile any of the two million or more other convicts in this country instead of Mehserle.

KTVU and KNBC both sent crews out and interviewed Jackson, Brooks and Anne Weills of the NLG at length, but, unsurprisingly, any mention of the protest during Monday night's new was scarce to nil.

Community members will also filing complaints with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), demanding that KTVU’s license be suspended immediately.