I can’t find any independent confirmation of this, but commenter Ed — the same guy who tipped me off about the Mark Sanchez sexual-assault story in the first place — again sends along a report based on something he saw on the local NBC affiliate in L.A.:

On KNBC, a reporter was interviewing a USC co-ed who was sympathetic to Sanchez. She had big doubts about the allegation. But she told the reporter something I found profoundly disturbing.

Have y’all seen the tape of Sanchez leaving the Gardens in handcuffs? It’s the only video of this event and it was shot by a female [Annenberg TV News] staffer.

The co-ed told the KNBC reporter that as the [ATVN staffer] was shooting the video, official USC functionaries, from (paraphrase) “the football team and the publicity officeâ€? commanded that she cease taping. They further stated that she was hurting “our schoolâ€? by her actions. The co-ed witnessed the above described behavior by the school officials. …

The photographer went on the record anonymously and stated she had received threats and was concerned for her welfare. She did not name the source of any threat.

As Ed says, that falls under the category of “profoundly disturbing” if true. Luckily, unlike Daily Trojan editors who have a long history of caving in to bullying by the administration (for example, an inside source tells me that the DT photographer who took the infamous Rose Bowl cheerleader photo was actually fired from the staff — notwithstanding the newspaper’s putative “independence” — because the administration was upset about the photo’s wide distribution across the Internet, claiming it hurt the school’s image), this Annenberg TV camerawoman obviously stuck by her guns and kept rolling film. Good for her, and — again, if she really was asked or “commanded” to shut off her camera — shame on USC.

[UPDATE/CORRECTION: I have it on good authority — better authority than my previous inside source — that the above account of the photographer’s firing is incorrect. Although the administration was indeed upset about the photo because they believed it hurt the school’s image, it was not pressure from the administration, but rather the photographer’s attempts to merchanise the photo (which is the property of the newspaper), that led to his being fired. My source assured me that administrative pressure had nothing to do with it — that he would have been fired for his actions whether or not the administration was upset about the photo — and I have no reason to disbelieve that. I was too quick to assume that my initial source’s account was accurate, and for that I apologize. Back when I was at the Daily Trojan, there were definitely some incidents where pressure from university employees had undue influence on editorial decisions, but that was several years ago, with an entirely different set of editors, and my own past experience doesn’t justify my reliance on flimsy sourcing for an allegation that the same thing is happening now.]

The TV report that Ed saw doesn’t appear to be available on KNBC’s website (the video that is online doesn’t include the interview with the “co-ed” that he mentions), and last night’s edition of ATVN doesn’t mention anything about the alleged attempted censorship incident, though it does show the Sanchez video. I’m definitely very curious to know more about this, because if what KNBC reported is true, and the camerawoman and witness are telling the truth, that is truly outrageous behavior by the university: trying to push around its own journalism students in order to create a Cardinal-and-Gold Wall of Silence.