ReasonTV
@ReasonTV·1.4M subscribers·4.8K videos
How a Local Blog Broke the Kelly Thomas Story: A conversation with Friends for Fullerton's Future
Posted
November 4, 2011
Views
35,774
Likes
643
Comments
143
Engagement
November 4, 2011
35,774
643
143
2.20%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
See what was published immediately before and after this episode.
8:06Now PlayingThe pretrial hearing for excessive force and murder charges filed against Officer Manuel Ramos and Cpl. Jay Cicinelli in the death of Kelly Thomas begins November 4, 2011. Thomas was a 37 year old schizophrenic drifter who was beaten to death by officers at a Fullerton, California, bus depot in July 2011 .
The charges came down after multiple headlines were made, not by local media, but by a local small-government blog in Fullerton called Friends for Fullerton's Future . The blog was the first to publish a horrific picture of Thomas in the hospital and a chilling video of the incident captured by a cell phone video camera.
"The picture was so horrific that the local news channels wouldn't show it and a lot of times they don't think there is much of a story there because they get the police version of the story," says Travis Kiger, a blogger at Friends for Fullerton's Future.
Kiger and Chris Thompson, also a blogger, sat down with Reason TV to talk about how the blog broke the story and what they think contributed to the international media attention.
Topics include: The lack of public information in the city of Fullerton; the decline of local media; reaction to charges filed by district attorney Tony Rackauckas; and how citizens can keep government accountable in their own cities.
Approximately 8:05 minutes.
Interview by Paul Detrick. Shot by Sharif Matar and Tracy Oppenheimer. Edited by Detrick
Related:
Cops Vs. Cameras: The Killing of Kelly Thomas & The Power of New Media
Go to for downloadable versions, and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube Channel to receive automatic updates when new material goes live.
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
