WATCH: Journalist Tries to Crash Uvalde Victim’s Funeral, Bikers Have a Different Idea.
Several members of this biker club, Guardians of the Children, just followed, blocked and surrounded me as I tried to approach the cemetery to meet a photographer. One member says they’re working with police: “They asked us to be here.”
Short post: https://t.co/OfZCAZbUZx pic.twitter.com/5d6wsLKQ0k
— Julian Gill (@JulianGi11) June 2, 2022
If you watch the video, you’ll see the reporter hassle the bikers, saying he’s “just trying to do” his job by entering and taking pictures. They try to explain to him that they are there to help provide space for the family that is mourning. The reporter, not ready to take no for an answer, shoves his phone in one of the biker’s faces, bumping into him. That led to a bit of a verbal escalation before the reporter eventually backed down.
As to the details, the bikers in the video are not part of a “gang,” but rather they are part of a non-profit called “Guardians of the Children.” The group provides security for traumatized children and their families. In this case, they were likely asked to help keep the press at bay, so that the families of the deceased kids could grieve in peace.
Julian Gill, the [Houston Chronicle “health reporter”] in question, lashed out on social media after the incident, asserting that it was crazy that members of a “biker gang” were helping the police. Many in the replies also expressed dismay, as if someone who rides a motorcycle is somehow inherently dangerous or something.
How do you report on or simply in Texas without understanding the ubiquity of motorcycles and their clubs here? Exit quote: “I don’t know who in the journalism profession needs to hear this, but you aren’t special. You do not have a right to invade people’s privacy, and your story is not more important than those grieving.”