The Beaver County Times got itself into a little bit of hot water on social media Tuesday night.
As we reported, the county courthouse was the scene of competing rallies last night for and against the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
Someone at the Times apparently thought it would be a good idea to have one of their reporters stick a cellphone on a tripod and live stream 45 minutes of the event to Facebook — solely from the pro-impeachment side of the road. The cellphone would occasionally pan across the street to the rally in support of President Trump, but all that could be heard the entire time were chants of those against him.
Needless to say, those who stood in support of President Trump were not happy and flocked to the Times’ Facebook page to accuse them of showing political bias. The Times attempted to explain that while their live feed was coming only from the pro-impeachment side of the road, their eventual coverage in print would be balanced with reports from both crowds.
While I did not think it was a good idea for them to live stream competing rallies unless they had the technical resources and manpower to stream both sides, I almost felt bad for the Times at first. There are very limited resources in the news business and they were getting hit hard.
