Update: 5/1, 4 p.m. — A spokeswoman for Fox News tells WTOP.com that their reporter, Jesse Watters, will “address the situation with Ryan Grim” on Monday night’s “O’Reilly Factor,” which airs at 8 p.m. ET
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WASHINGTON — Who says the mainstream media has short memories?
Certainly short tempers. Witnesses at a swanky MSNBC-sponsored after-party following the annual Washington Correspondents Dinner in D.C. Saturday say a fight broke out in Foggy Bottom between two national journalists, apparently over an incident that happened in 2009.
The venue: a heated tent under the shadow of the U.S. Institute of Peace, with DJ Biz “just a friend” Markie on the turntables.
According to Emily Heil at Washington Post’s “Reliable Source,” Huffington Post Washington bureau chief Ryan Grim decided to give Jesse Watters, an “ambush journalist” for Fox News’ “O’Reilly Factor,” a taste of his own medicine, and unsurprisingly, it dissolved into fisticuffs.
She writes:
… Grim realized who Watters was and recalled a beef he had with the “O’Reilly Factor” correspondent that dated back to 2009, when Watters, known as an “ambush journalist,” had engineered an on-camera confrontation of writer Amanda Terkel, now a HuffPo colleague of Grim. …
Grim decided to give Watters a taste of his own medicine, whipping out his camera phone and filming him. Watters didn’t take well to this, eventually snatching the phone away from Grim and putting it in his pocket. Grim set out to retrieve it, and a scuffle ensued. No cinematic sparring or broken beer bottles, witnesses said, but the two flailed around a bit, upending a table and bumping into several people.
Washington journo-on-the-scene Dave Weigel was right there to capture the action shot:
Brawl between @ryangrim and @jessebwatters at MSNBC party. pic.twitter.com/Fy7VKFBdmh
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) May 1, 2016
On cue: the “Nerdy fight” as described in the Heil headline, was giddily shared among the Twitterati :
Bill Nye was in the vicinity before the Watters-Grim showdown and we cannot possibly rule him out as a suspect — Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) May 1, 2016
We’re just fortunate the Grim-Watters @whcd brouhaha didn’t escalate pic.twitter.com/ZRGWm23kmH
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) May 1, 2016
After the skewering that cable news outfits got by comedian Larry Wilmore during the main event that night, it’s not surprising the media’s blood was up. But aside from the punch allegedly thrown by Marco Rubio’s campaign aide at his cohort on the Rand Paul team in September, these types of physical outbursts are still rare in a town where its snark is typically bigger than its bite.
