Category Archives: Citizen Journalism

June 5, 2013

News shark ‘disrupted like a nuclear bomb’

The behind-the-scenes story of Matt Drudge.


Matt Drudge, creator of the Drudge Report

“The Internet is going to save the news business.” – Matt Drudge, June 2, 1998

Today, on the 15th anniversary of visionary Matt Drudge’s speech to the National Press Club, his prophetic words haunt once-flourishing segments of the news industry.

According to the Pew Research Center for People & the Press, more Americans now get news from the Internet rather than radio or newspapers. Likewise, Pew notes that TV news is “increasingly vulnerable, as it may be losing its hold on the next generation of news consumers.”

It’s been almost two decades since Drudge crashed the news scene and turned the Old Media on its head – causing many mainstream newshounds to sneer at the thought of an amateur with wild instinct and an unpretentious news website threatening their media empire.

Drudge, occasionally dressed in only his underwear, rocked the news world from a small Hollywood apartment accompanied only by his black stray feline, aptly named “Cat.”

Mainstream Media gatekeepers have groaned and scoffed at the mere mention of his name, even calling him the “devil of journalism incarnate.” Once dubbed the “country’s reigning mischief-maker” by the New York Times and “Sludge” by former President Bill Clinton, Drudge scours the Web for intriguing stories and breaking news to post on the Drudge Report, the mega-hit website he launched in 1995.

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Complete text and more videos linked here.


June 1, 2013

DHS Accosts @Project_Veritas after exposing CA Assemblyman ‘Homeless Bill of Rights’ Hypocrisy (Video)

@Project_Veritas Our investigators visited the homes and offices of legislative sponsors of the California Homeless Bill of Rights to find they’re not interested in practicing what they preach. Their investigative reward? Homeland Security threatening their fourth amendment rights.


May 27, 2013

‘Hating Breitbart’ a must-see documentary

Film celebrates journalist who battled establishment media.

Andrew Marcus, the writer and producer of the full-length documentary film “Hating Breitbart,” first met Andrew Breitbart when he was covering the tea party movement in 2010.

“Filming tea party events, I came across Andrew Breitbart and was captivated by his energy and his commitment,” Marcus told WND in an interview. “We approached Breitbart with the idea (of making a film) and Andrew loved it.”

Marcus explained Breitbart had to agree to be followed around for what turned out to be the larger part of two years, without having editorial control over the film.

“Andrew didn’t see the film until we were just about done,” Marcus explained. “He saw the final rough-cut, when we were in the last stages of post-production.”

How did Breitbart react to seeing the film the first time?

“He loved it,” Marcus said, “so much so that he came up with a brilliant idea of how to promote the film.”

‘Occupy Breitbart’

Marcus explained Breitbart’s promotional concept.

“In a flash of intuition, Breitbart came up with the idea of funding the Occupy movement to create and film an ‘Occupy Breitbart’ movement,” Marcus explained.

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Complete text linked here.


May 24, 2013

Woolwich attack highlights power of mobile technology as a news source

Breaking news is no longer the preserve of established broadcasters, thanks to the camera phone and social media.


Mobile technology enables the public to witness events such as the Woolwich killing with the filter of time and geography removed.

A man covered in the blood of his recent victim, still holding the weapons, explains to a passer-by with a camera phone the motives for his appalling attack. Peppered with political messages and carrying a clumsy apology to “women who had to see that”, the bloodied man is not enraged that his macabre and twisted actions have been filmed, he is gratified. This is a 21st century terrorist “press” conference, conducted on a pavement in Woolwich in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon.

The video obtained by ITV News, but evidently not actually shot by them, is uploaded and disseminated to the globe, through YouTube, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, on emailed links, on reddit, Tumblr. Meanwhile on Twitter another eyewitness, rapper “Boya Dee”, whose timeline of mundane tweets previously focused on cheesy jokes, Arsenal and the appeal of Mila Kunis, was able to give a firsthand, dramatic and colloquial account of what he saw. It did not need a reporter or policeman to relay what he witnessed: “The two black bredas run this white guy over then hop out the car and start chopping mans head off with machete!!”

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Complete text linked here.


May 7, 2013

Video: Adam Kokesh verbally body slams, chokes out cops at White House #KOKESHED

Civil disobedience journalism at the White House.


April 26, 2013

Undercover video: The future of filmmaking

”Because if I take a regular camera and stick it in front of a Border Patrol agent, he’s going to say, ‘Take the camera away from me. I’m not allowed to speak to you.’ So the only way I have to speak the truth is to go with this, what some could consider, a sneaky way.”

Undercover audio and video recordings are a frequent part of the modern political news cycle, from James O’Keefe to the “47 percent” video to audio of a private conversation in Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky campaign office.

Filmmaker Dennis Michael Lynch, who recorded undercover video for his new documentary, “They Come to America II: The Cost of Amnesty,” says the world better get used to it.

“This is the future of the world,” Lynch, founder and CEO of TV360Media, told POLITICO. “You gotta watch what you say and what you do every second of the day.” It’s also, Lynch says, the future of political movies.

“Is this the future of filmmaking? Absolutely,” Lynch said. “And that’s a terrible thing. Everyone is going to be terrified.”

Lynch, who used sunglasses with video recording capabilities in his documentary to make the case that America’s borders remain dangerously porous, has been able to justify his method, however. Lynch, who witnessed the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City, has been motivated by a desire to keep terrorists out of the United States.

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Complete text linked here.


April 22, 2013

What You Need to Know About Filming, Photographing Police in Public

“We have the First Amendment. We are all now journalists,” Carlos Miller said, explaining how he believes the Internet truly gave citizens “freedom of the press.”


This photo was taken by Carlos Miller before he was arrested under various charges, for which he was acquitted, while he was recording the activities of police.

Carlos Miller has been arrested three times for photographing and filming police officers performing public duties. He knows his rights, but in a world where an increasing number of people carry a device with video and picture-taking capabilities everywhere they go, he thinks it’s time for them to learn too.

“I don’t purposefully set out to get arrested. I hate getting arrested,” Miller said in an interview with TheBlaze. “It really screws up your whole night.”

But Miller — who has worked professionally as a print journalist — is willing to stand up for what he believes is his lawful filming of cops in public.

Miller began detailing his first arrest in 2007 and trial on a blog. Even after he was acquitted of all charges — except resisting arrest, which he appealed and won — he started getting stories from other people who had trouble with the law while taking photos or filming. The blog Photography Is Not a Crime (PINAC) has continued in the several years since, sharing more of Miller’s stories and those from others.

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Complete text linked here.


March 21, 2013

How To Become a Target of the Media: Report the Facts

All of this has been clearly coordinated to give Senator Burdick cover in the mainstream media and to deflect from the actual story – she lied to her constituents and made up a story to duck their questions. That’s the real story and they’re hoping you’re not paying attention.


State Senator Ginny Burdick

This is not a story about policy or legislation. This is a story about journalism, and the all too cozy relationship between ‘reporters’ and the public officials they’re supposed to hold accountable. It’s been two weeks since Democrat State Senator Ginny Burdick of Oregon was to have held a town hall to answer questions on the current legislative session. As reported locally, Senator Burdick lied about “scheduling conflicts” causing her to cancel this town hall, which has yet to be rescheduled.

A citizen journalist released a video that showed Burdick returning home at the time that the town hall was to have been conducted and staying in all night, not even answering a knock at the door. The next day, I called Burdick’s office to verify her claims of scheduling conflicts, but instead confirmed that she made the whole thing up to avoid her constituents.

Burdick has repeatedly admitted that she fabricated the story to avoid having to face constituents who disagree with her stance on the Second Amendment. Burdick evidently does not fear hard questions from the mainstream media, and is fully comfortable admitting the lie when their cameras show up. It seems obvious that she has no reason to even expect hard questions from her friends in the liberal Portland press.

Meanwhile, a coordinated smear campaign has been waged by blogs, mainstream news outlets and national columnists against the reporter who verified and reported the story. I was famously labeled “the most irrelevant man in Oregon politics” by the progressive blog, Blue Oregon, in a story critical of the original report. Of course, four subsequent stories have been devoted to Mr. Irrelevant by that site – along with a news story in the Oregonian, two columns in the Oregonian (one of which was corrected and then retracted), a hastily assembled editorial board statement in the Oregonian, a report on KATU News that only gave Burdick’s side of the story, a report on KOIN Local 6 News that gave both sides, a hit piece in the New York Times by the rabidly anti-gun Joe Nocera, and (after a claim from her chief of staff that she would have no further comment on the matter) an appearance on Al Sharpton’s show on MSNBC (the title of which I, along with millions of other nonviewers, am too lazy to look up).

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Complete text linked here.


March 18, 2013

‘Hating Breitbart’ Screening Draws SRO CPAC Crowd, Feisty Debate

CPAC attendees simply couldn’t get enough of late Internet mogul Andrew Breitbart’s inspiration and legacy.

Shortly after conservatives packed into Breitbart News’ Uninvited panel, which featured voices too often not heard around CPAC, they squeezed into a screening hall to watch Hating Breitbart.

The documentary, which earned Blog Bash’s Best Movie honors earlier in the convention, drew cheers as well as a standing room only crowd on CPAC’s final day. A guard watching the screening door had to keep turning curious attendees away who wanted to see what the fuss was all about.

The event’s post-screening panel, which included muckraking journalist James O’Keefe, respected journalist John Fund, Hating Breitbart director Andrew Marcus, Media Matters for America’s Ari Rabin-Havt and Breitbart News’ Larry O’Connor.

Marcus said the profound difference between how the media covers left and right protests prompted him to pick up his camera, and that led him to Andrew’s side.

“This guy is our story. He personified the fight (against the media),” Marcus said.

The panel also featured Rabin-Havt attempting to skewer O’Keefe’s ACORN videos followed by the young journalist’s stinging retort.

Fund reduced the panel’s heat by deriding anyone who plays the race card as poisoning the modern political debate.

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Complete text linked here.


March 7, 2013

New O’Keefe Video: Cops Say ‘You’re On Your Own’ Without Gun

James O’Keefe’s latest video shows the ugly truth: if you don’t own a gun, you are on your own. In the video, he goes into police stations (predominately in the anti-gun Northeast) and collects a shocking harvest of responses from officers about how the police have no ability to protect them. Traffic and time prevent effective responses to 911 calls. O’Keefe’s undercover protagonist pushes the issue, “well, how am I supposed to protect my family if I don’t have a gun?” “You’re on your own,” is the common response.