Via Drudge comes this report that a CBS News local station in Minneapolis confiscated the pen of a local blogger covering Katie Couric’s Meet The Little People tour:

Katie Couric’s series of focus-group meetings with community groups across the country — without the presence of the news media — ran into a snag in Minneapolis Tuesday when a staffer for WCCO-TV attempted to disinvite Matt Bartel, who operates the local MNSpeak.com blog, then compromised by allowing him to surrender his pen. Bartel seemed unfazed by his treatment. “”I thought the event was worthwhile,” he wrote on the blog Wednesday. “I wish the discussion had been open to more people and the media, but the people who were there were, for the most part, great.”

But the Associated Press quoted Jane Kirtley, a University of Minnesota ethics professor, as saying, “At a time when the news media is trying to gain the trust through transparency, to have a meeting closed to the media and the general public is unbelievable.”

Funny enough, the almost-banned blogger was softer on Katie than the local MSM rag, the Star Tribune, which covered Couric’s “well-oiled machine:”

It was a well-orchestrated media event that excluded the media, a private invitation-only meeting in the brand new Minneapolis public library designed to connect network news’s biggest new deal — The Katie — with “regular folks” from Minnesota.

Those “folks” meeting Katie Couric, newly of CBS news, included former City Council President Jackie Cherryhomes, public relations guru Jon Austin, St. Thomas journalism professor Mark Neuzil, and numerous recognizable faces from government and social service agencies, as well as students and “soccer moms.”

Couric’s “Eye on America” road show passed through Minneapolis on Wednesday in a visit that was part fundraiser, part celebrity peek-a-boo, and part of the “soft sell” campaign by CBS News to introduce Katie Couric to the nation.

“To introduce Katie Couric to the nation.”

Because, you know, we haven’t seen and heard enough of her over the last 20 years.

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