Andrew Breitbart is publisher of the news portals Breitbart.com and Breitbart.tv. In January 2009, he launched Big Hollywood, a group blog off of Breitbart.com on Hollywood and politics from the center/right perspective. He gained greater notoriety when his second blog endeavor, Big Government, broke the ACORN prostitution scandal. Breitbart's latest group blog, Big Journalism, launched in January 2010. Andrew co-wrote the best-selling attack on celebrity culture, Hollywood, Interrupted and was the primary developer for The Huffington Post.
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Andrew Breitbart
How David Shuster Lied to Get Me to Appear on MSNBC
by Andrew BreitbartToday is the day that I have been invited to go on MSNBC for the very first time. At no point during the ACORN story was I put on the hot seat to defend the work of James O’Keefe. My thesis from day one has been that the mainstream media is biased in favor of the left and MSNBC is its most obvious case study.
So when MSNBC led the charge on Tuesday against James O’Keefe when he and three others were arrested in New Orleans at Senator Landrieu’s office, it came as no surprise that the cable network seized upon a narrative that presumed O’Keefe’s guilt, falsely extrapolated that he was being charged with felony wiretapping and instantaneously coined and repeated endlessly the new buzz phase, “Watergate Jr.”
Thus it came as no surprise to me that Keith Olbermann’s super sub, David Shuster, called me early Wednesday. ”Watergate Jr.” pushed MSNBC to send Shuster down to New Orleans to own the destruction-by-media of James O’Keefe and anyone in his proximity. I immediately told Shuster that I had been getting emails about his absurd, over-the-top and rush-to-judgment journalism. He told me that I had him confused with Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, that he has “no horse in this race.” He asked that I come on his show and that he would give me a fair interview. He proceeded to send me the following emails to formalize the request. See below <strong>(emphasis mine)</strong>:
Today is the day that I have been invited to go on MSNBC for the very first time. At no point during the ACORN story was I put on the hot seat to defend the work of James O’Keefe. My thesis from day one has been that the mainstream media is biased in favor of the left and MSNBC is its most obvious case study.
So when MSNBC led the charge on Tuesday against James O’Keefe when he and three others were arrested in New Orleans at Senator Landrieu’s office, it came as no surprise that the cable network seized upon a narrative that presumed O’Keefe’s guilt, falsely extrapolated that he was being charged with felony wiretapping and instantaneously coined and repeated endlessly the new buzz phase, “Watergate Jr.”
Thus it came as no surprise to me that Keith Olbermann’s super sub, David Shuster, called me early Wednesday. ”Watergate Jr.” pushed MSNBC to send Shuster down to New Orleans to own the destruction-by-media of James O’Keefe and anyone in his proximity. I immediately told Shuster that I had been getting emails about his absurd, over-the-top and rush-to-judgment journalism. He told me that I had him confused with Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, that he has “no horse in this race.” He asked that I come on his show and that he would give me a fair interview. He proceeded to send me the following emails to formalize the request. See below <strong>(emphasis mine)</strong>:
As you see, Shuster is attempting to lure me into this story based upon the false premise of his objective neutrality on the issue. Notice he says, “As I said, I don’t have a horse in this race.” A simple Google search of David Shuster and James O’Keefe immediately finds that Shuster went into a Twitter frenzy to tar and feather James O’Keefe and propogated what are now provably false lies about the Landrieu case.
See below:
(Read the full post and watch the video of the interview at BigJournalism.com)
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A1 to A73 in 24 Hours: The Life and Death of ‘Watergate Jr.’
by Andrew BreitbartFor those in the mainstream media committed to report the false and libelous narrative of “Watergate Jr.,” “wiretapping” and “bugging,” I predict much egg on your J-school grad faces. In your rush to judgment to convict James O’Keefe and his companions, you vengeful political partisans of press forgot to ponder: “Was Mr. O’Keefe up to one of his patented and obvious clown nose-on hidden camera tricks, trying to make his subjects look foolish?” Blog commenters seem to be quicker on the uptake than six-figured Washington-based pundits these days. And I predict there will be tape to vindicate these four pranksters, too.
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MSM Leaping to Conclusions — While Big Government Waits for Facts
by Andrew BreitbartWait until the facts are in.
Mainstream Media, ACORN, Media Matters (all the supposed defenders of due process and journalistic ethics) are jumping to conclusions over the arrest today of James O’Keefe, with the clear intention to smear and, if possible, convict O’Keefe and his alleged co-conspirators in the court of public opinion in order to taint the “jury of their peers.”
The ACORN story was a huge black eye for the organized left and their allies and cohorts in the mainstream media. So they are relishing every minute of this breaking story, making it their top story – while they ignored the initial ACORN story until they no longer could.
MSNBC and other “news organizations” are even billing this developing story as “Watergate”. What do Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow know? And when did they know it?
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‘You Are a Bad, Bad, Bad Journalist’
by Andrew BreitbartI couldn’t believe I was having this conversation. It felt like a scene from a movie that conveniently ties plot points together when two critical characters in the storyline share a moment of implausible significance – where the intrepid reporter finally runs his target to ground.
So at first I had trouble getting my words out. “I’m Andrew Breitbart,” I exhaled. Instead of hanging up, Bertha Lewis laughed like someone I would probably like in a different setting – but certainly not in this lifetime now that we are permanently and publicly tied to one another as media-based adversaries.
I knew the awkwardness of the moment would turn into trouble when I started asking her pointed questions and, sure enough, we soon we found ourselves in trouble.
“Did you go to the White House last year?” I asked.
Bertha Laughed heartily. ”No,” she said.
“Really?” I pushed.
“No. One hundred per cent not. Not this year. Not last year. Not ever,” she stated firmly, all the while maintaining an awkward and ironic joviality that was likely born of the weirdness of our impromptu exchange. (more…)
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UPDATE: White House Spokeswoman Says Different Bertha Lewis on Visitor’s Log
by Andrew BreitbartUPDATE: According to Politico’s Ben Smith, the Bertha Lewis who went to the White House is not ACORN’s CEO but another woman named “Bertha Lewis.” I contacted Smith to tell him that Big Government would offer a correction if the “administration official” who offered the information went on record and told us who the “other” Bertha Lewis is and got the unnamed administration source to come out from behind the veil of anonymity and use his/her name. So far, according to unnamed White House sources, “different” people with the familiar names of Malik Shabazz, Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers were discovered on White House visitors logs. As I skeptically asked on my Twitter account, “What are the odds?”
First thing Monday morning, Smith contacted the White House and White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki came from behind her anonymous veil and confirmed for Smith, “it was a different Bertha Lewis, though she declined to share details about that visitor, citing privacy reasons.”‘
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AP Whitewashes My Public Statement on Whitewashed ACORN Investigation
by Andrew Breitbart
Pete Yost of the Associated Press asked for my comment regarding the findings of the ACORN “internal investigation.” Here is what I emailed him:
ACORN is a corrupt and criminal organization, and anyone with open eyes can see this. Yet SEIU’s Andy Stern and left wing puppetmaster John Podesta, of the Soros-funded radical leftist think-tank, the Center for American Progress, chose to architect a whitewashed ‘internal investigation’ by a Democrat Party hack from Massachusetts, and have put immense efforts into launching a two-pronged propaganda campaign and legal assault against the filmmakers of the ‘pimp and prostitute’ exposé and the story’s publisher. BigGovernment.com continues to expose ACORN’s illegal activity and has helped to illuminate how corrupt organizations like ACORN, SEIU and HCAN are coordinating the efforts to shove radical health care reform down an unwilling majority of Americans throats.
Here is the sole excerpt from the above statement chosen for the article:
The report is “a whitewashed ‘internal investigation’ by a Democrat Party hack from Massachusetts,” said conservative columnist Andrew Breitbart, who is being sued by ACORN along with James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, who played the prostitute and her boyfriend in the videos. Breitbart posted the videos on his Web site.
I wanted the BigGovernment.com readers to see that’s it’s not just the internal investigators who are whitewashing the magnitude of the ACORN scandal, it’s the mainstream media writ large.
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Study: Has Editor & Publisher ‘Falsely Framed’ Peter Dreier as an Objective ACORN Critic?
by Andrew BreitbartMedia criticism of our ongoing and still unfolding ACORN story has been as bad as it has been funny and sad. The racket that is the mainstream media is coming to an end and exposed reporters and journalists, no longer feigning neutrality, have chosen to drive off the cliff, a la Thelma and Louise, in a customized ACORN convertible.
Professor and ACORN Adviser Peter Dreier
On Monday Christopher R. Martin and Peter Dreier wrote a commentary entitled “Have the Media ‘Falsely Framed’ ACORN?” for Editor & Publisher, “the authoritative journal covering all aspects of the North American newspaper industry, including business, newsroom, advertising, circulation, marketing, technology, online and syndicates.“ E&P was once the bible of the newspaper and publishing business, but in recent years has moved hard left, hiding its ideological tilt under a patina of “scholarship.”
Martin and Dreier’s piece — while not framed as such — is an ideological defense of ACORN and an attack on those who have truthfully investigated and exposed the obviously troubled community organizing group. It’s basically, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men trying to put ACORN together again. But instead of attempting to rebuild the king, Martin and Dreier are trying to rebuild the media and the left elite, who use the poor and the downtrodden as their foot soldiers in order to maintain power in government, academia, the media and Hollywood. For them, ACORN provides the perfect photo-op.
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ACORN Scandal, Part 2: The Evidentiary Phase
by Andrew BreitbartThe last two months of the growing ACORN scandal have focused on the damning videos shot by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles.
In seven out of eight offices, ACORN employees attempted to aid and abet O’Keefe and Giles’ illicit “scheme” to establish a brothel for underage illegal-immigrant prostitutes from Central America. .
That phase has been tabled for a future date, as I forthrightly stated last Thursday evening to Attorney General Eric Holder on FOX NEWS’ Hannity show.
The next phase will be the evidentiary phase. Starting with, but not limited to an extraordinary document dump at the San Diego office that was one of the offices O’Keefe and Giles exposed, causing the firing of a single employee.
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Thanks for Paying Attention Big Journalism
by Andrew BreitbartIn response to the Columbia Journalism Review’s accusing me of “blackmailing” the Attorney General of the United States, I must take notice that the mainstream media as a journalistic establishment IS paying attention to the ongoing ACORN scandal. Good. I thought so.
What the Columbia Journalism Review is doing is very similar to what Media Matters is doing: protecting the Democrat-Media Complex, the natural alliance of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media. This ACORN investigation has been going on for two months and Hannah, James, and I have proven to be truth-tellers every step of the way, while the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now has been proven time and again to be liars.
Yet instead of engaging the real, newsworthy issues of ACORN’s possible corruption, malfeasance and illegal behavior, the CJR, like its more overtly political online counterpart Media Matters, and indeed every other MSM outlet, has been sitting it out on the sidelines, waiting – rooting – for Hannah Giles, James O’Keefe and me to make a mistake. In fact, my appearance Thursday night is the only time in which the media has introduced itself into this ongoing narrative: proof that it’s paying attention and taking sides.
Neither, by the way, has the CJR challenged James Rainey, a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, who has consistently shaded his coverage favorably toward ACORN since we first broke the story back in September, evincing little interest in the truth but instead muttering about the standards of the Society of Professional Journalists (take link, be sure to read the comments). “But the Society of Professional Journalists has set a standard that deception should be used only when every other reporting approach has been exhausted and only then in certain cases, most notably to reveal a severe social problem or to prevent people from being harmed.” (more…)
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ACORN: The LA Story, Part I
by Andrew BreitbartToday I received a phone call from my friend, Gary H., who said that ACORN was staging a protest outside the Fox News studios in West Los Angeles. I called someone at the Fox News bureau to find out that there were no protesters there, but quickly realized ACORN had gotten that wrong too. They were protesting in front of FOX Television Center, the home of local affiliate KTTV.
Since I woke up to the news that ACORN had sued the U.S. government to get its federal funding back, it struck me as obvious that ACORN is in the process of trying to get its mojo back absent any real investigations by the Holder Justice Department, the Democratic-controlled Congress, and the Jerry Brown sham investigation in California – not to mention the so-called “internal investigation” whose chief investigator was picked by number one ACORN defender, John Podesta, and SEIU head Andy Stern, whose union is deeply aligned with the troubled “community organizing” group.
Despite all the evidence we have published that exposes ACORN as both corrupt and criminal, no other mainstream media organization has shown any signs of investigating ACORN despite countless angles and document trails. So I knew I had to go down to the protest on Bundy Drive to ask ACORN protesters a few questions.
With very little time I got in the car with Big Government Associate Editor Alex Marlow to meet Gary H. down at the protest. When we arrived, the protesters were fifty or so strong, monitored by a few police units standing to the side. Given that the police made me feel safe, I walked straight toward the chanting protesters while accepting an ACORN full-color single page handout entitled, “ACORN MEMBERS — MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THEIR COMMUNITIES,” which sung the praises of the organization. (more…)
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‘Thinking Big’: Breitbart Signs Book Deal With Hachette/Grand Central
by Andrew BreitbartFrom the New York Observer:
Andrew Breitbart, a self-described “accidental culture warrior” who used to work with Matt Drudge on the Drudge Report, is writing a how-to book called Thinking Big, aimed at frustrated non-leftists who want to fight back against what the author calls the “Democrat media complex.”
The book will be published by Grand Central, an imprint of Hachette Book Group USA, which paid Mr. Breitbart an advance worth more than half a million dollars. Mr. Breitbart will be edited by Rick Wolff, who also recently edited the autobiography of CNN founder Ted Turner. (more…)
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Two Fish, One Barrel: Deconstructing Andrew Sullivan’s ‘The Breitbart Standard,’ Demolishing Conor Friedersdorf’s ‘The Right’s Lesser Media’
by Andrew BreitbartTo which I respond to my unofficial biographer Conor Friedersdorf’s Daily Beast criticism of your’s truly and bigger fish Andrew Sullivan’s two-thumbs-up to it:
Andrew Sullivan (left) and Conor Friedersdorf
In the piece you link to and affirm in the Daily Beast, “The Right’s Lesser Press,” Conor Friedersdorf refuses to interview me as he continues to be my unofficial biographer. (I’m VERY reachable, Conor.) He writes opinion pieces on me purporting to be journalism. He doesn’t quote or cite me, he simply assumes and pushes the point of view he thinks I have and makes an argument based on these alleged positions. It’s sloppy and you, of all people, should know better.
Breitbart.com is MOSTLY a news aggregator. It carries the Associated Press, Reuters, even, Agence France Presse, from those dreaded croissant eaters!!!
It even carries the New York Times on its front page — a benefit that even Big Government and Big Hollywood don’t receive.
Big Hollywood is what it is: a counter-voice to the virtually monolithic Hollywood left. How dare I grant a platform, and a means for the defense of those in Hollywood who would dare go against the strident and intolerant Hollywood left.
Big Government, too, is providing an outlet for voices and ideas that are not proportionally represented in the traditional and mostly biased mainstream media.
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Podesta Spends Soros’ Money Stupidly
by Andrew BreitbartThis week’s Washington Times column:
A telling event occurred on Sept. 15, Day 6 of the drip, drip, drip ACORN video rollout. President Obama met for lunch with former President Bill Clinton at trendy Il Mulino in New York City.
For the second consecutive day, the New York Post featured the ACORN scandal on its cover – complete with James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles in their outrageous “pimp and ho” costumes.
Does anyone think the president and the former president were unaware that the city in which they were dining was mesmerized by the ACORN scandal – especially since ACORN had bragged that its employees had kicked Mr. O’Keefe and Ms. Giles out of their New York office?
The Sept. 15 edition of the New York Post explored the political angles and directed attention to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s investigation into why an ACORN office in its jurisdiction helped instruct a prospective brothel owner how to hide his prostitution proceeds in a tin in his backyard.
No one in the morally superior media world has asked, why did Mr. Obama have lunch with Mr. Clinton that day? So let me take a guess, and it seems like an obvious answer. Mr. Obama, under siege by a video-a-day expose that was exposing the Democratic Party to an avalanche of consequences (ACORN defunded in the House and Senate, ACORN delinked from the census, etc.), needed advice from the last president to navigate through a major political scandal.
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Planting the Seeds: The Politicized Art Behind the ACORN Plan
by Andrew BreitbartEverything you needed to know about the unorthodox roll out of the now-notorious ACORN sting videos was hidden in plain sight in my Sept. 7 column, “Katie Couric, Look in the Mirror.” ACORN was not the only target of those videos; so were Katie, Brian, Charlie and every other mainstream media pooh-bah.
They were not going to report this blockbuster unless they were forced to. And they were. What’s more, it ain’t over yet. Not every hint I dropped in that piece about what was to come has played itself out yet.Stay tuned.
When filmmaker and provocateur James O’Keefe came to my office to show me the video of him and his friend, Hannah Giles, going to the Baltimore offices of ACORN – the nation’s foremost “community organizers” – dressed as a pimp and a prostitute and asking for – and getting – help for various illegal activities, he sought my advice. In the past, Mr. O’Keefe created brilliant social satire that rocked his college campus and even made its way on to the talk-radio and cable-news shows, but the magnitude of his latest adventure had the potential to rock the political establishment.
I was awed by Mr. O’Keefe’s guts and amazed by the footage, but explained that the mainstream media would try to kill this important and illuminating expose about a corrupt and criminal political racket, and that the well-funded political left would go into “war room” mode, with 25-year-old Mr. O’Keefe and 20-year-old cohort Miss Giles in the cross hairs. I felt I had a moral obligation to protect these young muckrakers from the left and from the media, and to devise a strategy that would force the media’s hand. (more…)
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Exposing ACORN: Introducing James O’Keefe
by Andrew BreitbartWhen James O’Keefe came to my door in August, I was shocked by how young he looked. Kinda like Matthew Modine circa “Vision Quest.”
“Come on in,” I said, and I took him to my basement command center. He opened his laptop computer and showed me the very-hard-to-believe independent film investigative journalism project he had described to me over the phone
How can I describe the video I watched? Is it a put on? I almost can’t believe what I am seeing. But with regards to ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, I am quite cynical. So I do believe it.
But I still find myself wanting to believe it is fake. It’s just too weird. It’s too wrong. But James continuously reassures me it’s real.
So who is James O’Keefe?
Morley Safer meets Sacha Baron Cohen, I think. Not precise. But you get the point.
This isn’t your mother’s “60 Minutes.” But then again, why would a twenty five-year old even think straight journalism? His crowd doesn’t even know who Don Hewitt is. They need it quick cut, set to music and packaged to go viral on YouTube.
From what I gather, James wants to speak to his twenty-something peers who have been asked to pay for unaccountable big government ventures like ACORN on their maxed-out generational credit card. To the tune of potentially billions. (more…)
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