This morning, CUTV (Concordia University Television) cameraman and programming director Laith Marouf was filming a student protest (part of the ongoing Quebec student strike over tuition increase) in Montreal when SPVM riot cops moved in. His footage was streaming out live on the web to approximately 5000 viewers.
Despite repeated attempts to inform police that they, as journalists, were simply doing their job by filming the protest and police actions and repeated mentions by the CUTV team that all this was going out live online (ie. no chance to destroy the footage, a good reason for the cops to watch their step), the police arrested Marouf anyways.
The video is below, the arrest happens at the end, kinda hard to see because Marouf was holding the camera, but you get the idea:
* photo by MF Gold
Were there really over 5,000 people watching CUTV live streaming a protest? Where do that number come from?
I don’t believe there were that many viewers for one second.
The source for the number is CUTV. Not surprising considering they’re the only outlet offering live streaming of the protests, a topic that has nationwide interest and their video streams are embedded by other sites. Also, the YouTube clip already has over 8000 views and Occupy streams frequently got hundreds of thousands of live viewers.