One of Breitbart's hacks accuses Salon of hypocrisy on ambush reporting

[Jefferson23]

** Talk about hypocrisy!


Wednesday, Apr 14, 2010

Breitbart's practitioners of distorted pseudo-journalistic trickery can't tell the real thing from the fake anymore
By Gabriel Winant
Salon has somehow gotten into a toxic relationship with Andrew Breitbart. You know, nobody really intended for it to get this far, but one thing led to another, and -- God, those guys are needy. They're just begging for our attention all the time.

Now that the cloud of bilious air gathered around February’s CPAC events in Washington has scattered, you may have forgotten the relevant details. Andrew Breitbart is a budding conservative media mogul, the founder of a constellation of so-called "Big" sites -- "Big Journalism," "Big Hollywood," etc. -- aimed at taking down what he sees as the dominant liberal institutions poisoning America. His signature accomplishment was sponsoring Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe in their ACORN secret-camera stunt. Despite Breitbart's favorite question for our reporter at CPAC, Mike Madden -- "Have you seen the tapes?" -- it turns out that nobody really had, because they were edited down into near-fiction.

Yesterday, Big Journalism announced that they’d caught us in a slip up. I wrote a post going after Bill O'Reilly and his traveling ambush artist, Jesse Watters, for their unfair prank on Al Gore. Big Journalism's Larry O'Connor thought he’d detected a glaring inconsistency. In a piece called, "Salon Decries Ambush Video Journalism -- Except When Their Reporter Does It," O'Connor pointed out that despite my high-minded decrying the evils of ambush journalism, Salon's hands are hardly clean on the matter.



To think, a punk kid with a camera tracking down and following a public figure to try to get them to say something damaging on video. Oh wait, isn't that exactly what Editor-in-chief Joan Walsh of Salon.com gleefully celebrated in February after her reporter, Mike Madden, used the same tactic on Big Journalism publisher Andrew Breitbart?


remainder in full: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/04/14/breitbart_madden_ambush/index.html

[Jefferson23]

1. Breitbart peddles misleading video, again

His "proof" that black congressmen lied about being called "nigger" is as useless as his ACORN clips
By Joan Walsh


Andrew Breitbart isn't fit to spit-shine the shoes of civil rights hero and Congressman John Lewis. It's ludicrous to think that the right-wing bully believed he had the moral or political standing to call Lewis a liar, after Lewis and two other black congressmen reported they were called "nigger" by tea partiers during the healthcare reform vote March 20. Lewis's word on the confrontation is good enough for me.

Now comes news that Breitbart is the liar – or at least the misleader. Video he's been peddling to "prove" the congressmen were not called the N-word was actually after the slurs occurred. As a friend notes, "It's like running video of the Twin Towers on 9/10 to prove 9/11 didn't happen." Of course the videos Breitbart peddled to claim ACORN helped a supposed pimp and prostitute set up a child-prostitution ring have also been found misleading, at best. The California Attorney General's review said they were "severely edited" and in fact "showed no violation of the law." New York authorities concluded the same thing.

AP has the full scoop.

Continue reading

A reconstruction of the events shows that the conservative challenges largely sprang from a mislabeled video that was shot later in the day.

Breitbart posted two columns on his Web site saying the claims were fabricated. Both led with a 48-second YouTube video showing Lewis, Carson, other Congressional Black Caucus members and staffers leaving the Capitol. Some of the group were videotaping the booing crowd.

Breitbart asked why the epithet was not captured by the black lawmakers' cameras, and why nobody reacted as if they had heard the slur. He also questioned whether the epithets could have been shouted by liberals planted in the crowd.

But the 48-second video was shot as the group was leaving the Capitol — at least one hour after Lewis, D-Ga., and Carson walked to the Capitol, which is when they said the slurs were used.

Questioned about using a video on his Web site from the wrong moment, Breitbart stood by his claim that the lawmakers were lying.

"I'm not saying the video was conclusive proof," he said.


AP also reports that Rep. Heath Shuler – a Blue Dog Democrat from North Carolina, no raving lefty – says he heard the slurs too.

in full:http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/politics/2010/04/13/andrew_breitbart_misleading_video/index.html

[wilt the stilt]

2. The times I have watched Breitbart

he strikes me as one angry dude. I think he was the dumb jewish guy in his clique( I grew up with Jewish guys) and everyone made fun of him. He just wasn't quick enough for the verbal sparring. He is striking out now.