Hours after Big Journalism reported on a death threat made against an ABC reporter covering the Occupy Oakland protest and following a week’s worth of videos at Breitbart.TV chronicling the demonstration’s descent into lawless disorder, City Hall has said that the tent city will not continue. Last night an eviction notice was issued that cited the “increasing frequency of violence, assaults, threats and intimidation.” [VIEW THE EVICTION NOTICE BELOW.]

“Hopefully there’s not a riot…”

From the San Jose Mercury News:

A letter posted on the city’s web site at 8 p.m. expresses concerns about a wide range of public health and security issues surrounding the 10-day old camp in Frank Ogawa Plaza. No moves have been made by police or other officials to dismantle the camp since the notice went up.

[...]

Citing a rat infestation, numerous fire hazards, threats of intimidation and open displays of violence, Thursday’s letter from city officials appears to be a first step toward moving the residents out of the camp.

“We believe that after 10 days, the City can no longer uphold public health and safety. In recent days, camp conditions and occupants’ behavior have significantly deteriorated, and it is no longer manageable to maintain a public health and safety plan,” reads the notice posted on the city’s web site.

A pro-Occupy blogger for the San Francisco Chronicle attributes the eviction notice
to the footage of Occupy Oakland posted at the Breitbart sites:

The whole move toward eviction seems to have been started by the selfishness of certain specific San Francisco Bay Area Media types, and perhaps with a healthy assist from Breitbart TV.

What began nationwide as a run-of-the-mill gathering of various socialists and Communists plunged quickly into bedlam: squalor, violence, public urination, fire hazards, and public sex at Occupy Oakland.  The Occupy protesters eventually banned media from the tent city and threatened the life of KGO-TV’s Amy Hollyfield, who was allegedly accosted by a man who said, “We shoot white bitches like you around here.” (more…)

About a week ago I published a post at Big Journalism outlining fourteen clear factual errors in Richard Stengel’s essay on the Constitution.

I said at the time that I considered it a journalistic scandal that such an error-ridden piece appeared in Time magazine, a once-respected publication.  For instance, in the article he stated remarkably that “[i]f the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it sure doesn’t say so.”  I have dubbed this scandal “Stengel-gate.”

I also considered it scandalous because of who the author, Richard Stengel, is:

The author is not only the Managing Editor for Time, but he spent two years as President and CEO of the National Constitution Center.  And even today, he works with the National Constitution Center’s Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution, whose stated mission is “to help both professional journalists and students interested in journalism understand constitutional issues more deeply.”  That is right.  He is there to help journalists understand the Constitution better.

It has been about a week and the story has even appeared on Fox News.  And yet there is apparently no correction, no retraction of the story, or even a defense of it.

So frankly in an effort to keep the heat on, I decided to explore the other end of the scandal: what on earth was he doing working at something called the National Constitution Center?

I plan to spend several days discussing that issue and to kick it off, I decided to write a letter to its current President and CEO, the man holding the position that Richard Stengel once occupied: David Eisner.

So on Tuesday night, I wrote to him directly.  You can see the letter I wrote below the fold (the format is slightly altered by wordpress itself).

I do not know if he will respond or how he will respond.  But whatever his reaction is, even a non-response, will reflect on him and his organization.  And that in and of itself is noteworthy.

(more…)

Jerry Bever, general manager for CBS Anchorage affiliate KTVA, issued a statement today regarding the inadvertent voice mail left on the phone of a senior staff member of the Joe Miller campaign. He claimed that the discussion his staff members had regarding potential scandals for the Miller campaign was taken out of context:

The complete conversation was about what others might be able to do to cause disruption within the Miller campaign, not what KTVA could do.

The American public is supposed to believe that the staff of KTVA were sitting around imagining potentially scandalous stories that others might foist upon the Miller campaign and not ideas that they, themselves were conjuring.

Instead of just taking Mr. Bever’s word for it (like so many in the media and at Soros-Funded left-wing activist organizations have), lets actually hold the statements made on the recording up to the context Mr. Bever has provided.

Look at what was said and try as hard as you can to fit these sentences into that context:

MALE REPORTER: Oh yeah… can you repeat Joe Miller’s…uh… list of people, campaign workers, which one’s the molester?

[INAUDIBLE]

FEMALE VOICE: We know that out of all the people that will show up tonight, at least one of them will be a registered sex offender.

[Laughter]

MALE REPORTER: You have to find that one person…

If they were discussing what others might do, why do they keep saying “You” and “I”? Why don’t they say “They have to find that one person…” or “They know that out of all the people…” (more…)

Today’s lead story at Politico is one of the finer examples you will find of ideological ax-grinding dressed up as straight-news reporting. The piece, by Ken Vogel and Keach Hagey, uses just about every journalistic trick in the book, assembling a selection of quotes and points to establish a narrative that was set in the authors’ minds long before they sat down at their keyboards. But the piece does so much more too; it flirts with some blurry ethical lines as well. Shouldn’t, for example, a Politico article about Journolist have perhaps mentioned or disclosed that at least some reporters for Politico were, you know, members of Journolist? Perhaps Politico has an incentive to downplay the impact of the listserve? (And, Mr. Vogel, did Andrew Breitbart really not respond to Politico?)

I will leave it to my colleagues at Big Journalism to give the proper attention this article is due. However, in building their ideological case, the authors point to certain “facts” about stories that first appeared here, which necessitates a few words here.

In discussing the recent Shirley Sherrod imbroglio, the authors write that Breitbart,

did not quite own up to the seriousness of the error he committed – posting a video misleadingly edited to make it appear that a black Agriculture Department named Shirley Sherrod was boasting of discriminating against a white farmer.

We did not edit, much less misleadingly edit, any of Ms. Sherrod’s remarks. We posted two excerpts from her speech, representing the sum total of the video we had. We didn’t cut anything out of her speech. Is any news organization in the future who only posts excerpts from a speech vulnerable to the charge that it “misleadingly edited” it?

At the very end of one of the video excerpt’s, Ms. Sherrod begins to explain how she later realized her initial discrimination of the white farmer was wrong. In Andrew’s article about the speech he  noted

Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help.

If we were trying to show that Ms. Sherrod was “boasting” of discrimination and were prone to editing the tape as evidence, wouldn’t we have cut that part out? Wouldn’t we have neglected to mention that she eventually did the right thing? But, the media’s focus on Ms. Sherrod is really an attempt to misdirect attention from the NAACP, who was the real focus of the article and the video excerpts.

As Andrew’s article noted:

Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.

We all now know that Ms. Sherrod’s anecdote was part of a larger point about the need to move beyond racial prejudices. But, the NAACP audience did not know that as they heard the speech. As Ms. Sherrod recounted the first part of her parable, how she declined to do everything she could for the farmer because of his race, the audience responded in approval. By itself, that made the video excerpt newsworthy.

Indeed, the NAACP, who was in possession of the full video for months, even noted in its initial statement condemning Ms. Sherrod:

The reaction from many in the audience is disturbing. We will be looking into the behavior of NAACP representatives at this local event and take any appropriate action.

This was always the story and it is clearly an uncomfortable one for the NAACP and, obviously, the authors of the Politico article. The media would rather focus on Ms. Sherrod or Andrew Breitbart than report that leaders of a state chapter of the NAACP approved of racial discrimination.

(more…)

Chuck Johnson is at it again. He must be out on a weekend pass. I was compelled to answer the Little Green Monster after I saw him go after James O’Keefe with that same tired wet noodle of a charge he has leveled at so many, calling him a white nationalist. Johnson claimed in an LGF post that “according to a group called ‘One People’s Project,’ ACORN sting filmmaker James O’Keefe was photographed attending a 2006 white nationalist conference titled ‘Race and Conservatism.’”

Sounds terrible, right? Sure, until you get the facts that Johnson doesn’t tell you. When it became clear that it wasn’t a “white nationalist conference,” Johnson tried to slither out of responsibility for his words by saying in a new post: “It’s very clear that I attributed the ‘white nationalist conference’ claim to One People’s Project; that’s what the words ‘according to’ mean.”

Busted! As if it weren’t obvious that in his original post, he was approving of and endorsing what One People’s Project said. But this is typical of Johnson’s weaselly hit-and-run smear tactics.

Meanwhile, Larry O’Connor at Big Journalism uncovered the truth about O’Keefe’s supposed participation in this conference:

(more…)

[Note: This is the latest segment in an ongoing series about Code Pink and its co-founder Jodie Evans. Click here to read earlier articles.]

The name of Obama funder and terrorist sympathizer Jodie Evans turns up twice in recently released White House visitor logs.

Buffy Wicks, center, 2008 photo by St. Louis Argus

The logs show that a ‘Jodie Evans’ met with Buffy Wicks, the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement (OPE) on June 19, 2009. The meeting came just days after Evans’ group, Code Pink, visited the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza from May 28th to June 14th and was given a letter by Hamas to deliver to President Barack Obama.

On December 30th, the Obama administration released 25,000 records of visitors to the White House complex from the latter half of September. Mixed in those records were visits from other dates, including two by ‘Jodie Evans’ in June.

(more…)

I 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…)

Earlier today, while guest hosting on The Dennis Miller Show, Andrew Breitbart interviewed Kurt Haskell from Taylor, Michigan.  Mr. Haskell was a passenger on the now infamous Flight 253 on Christmas day from Amsterdam to Detroit.  We all know now how this flight ended (with the Flying Dutchman careening across multiple seats to stop a would-be-suicide bomber from exploding the plane and hundreds of innocent lives).  But, Mr. Haskell shared his story of what he witnessed before anyone even boarded the plane.

While waiting in the holding area in the Amsterdam airport, in a room designated for only the passengers of Flight 253, Mr. Haskell saw a well-dressed man of apparent Indian descent accompany a young, poorly attired man of African descent to the boarding gate.  What Mr. Haskell saw and heard next is of seemingly great significance:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(more…)

From Mediaite:

14. Andrew Breitbart, Breitbart.com

Though he’s not exactly a household name, Andrew Breitbart has long been a power player in the sphere of Internet influence and opinion. The former editor of The Drudge Report, and lead researcher and developer for The Huffington Post, Breitbart has since set out on his own, creating a number of sites that both aggregate and report from what he describes as a center right point-of-view. When Breitbart provided an exclusive interview with Mediate this year, he revealed big plans to grow his “Big” network of sites beyond Big Hollywood and Big Government (which he launched this Fall.) Big Journalism is set to launch next January, with more to follow in the coming year.

(more…)

From the New York Observer: