Thursday, February 16, 2012

Olbermann Destroy's Breitbart's Smears On The Occupy Movement (VIDEO)

So, as I'm sure you've seen by now, there was a video posted over the weekend of Breitbart completely losing it at the CPAC convention after consuming some amount of red wine greater than or equal to one glass:


In response to people commenting on how unhinged Breitbart was, his employees started trying to defend him by saying his "Stop Raping People!" screams were justified by a serious problem at Occupy Camps. His sites published a list of 17 incidents of "rape or various sexual assaults" they claimed occurred at Occupy.

But Keith Olbermann decided to actually read the news stories associated with Breitbart's claims, and he found that in almost every single case the Breitbart crew was twisting reality. Here's the devastating segment from his show:


I should say that there have been some crimes, including sexual assaults, at Occupy encampments around the country. This is not surprising, since we live in a culture with a serious problem of violence against women, and it's not going to be any less of a problem in communities that provide food and lodging for those who need it and are extremely open and accepting almost anyone who wants to participate. From what I've seen, the Occupy groups have been very proactive in working to make their areas safe and welcoming for women. This is not to excuse any of the assaults, but rather to point out that they are not reflective of the occupy movement or most of the people involved. And I take the point that sexual assaults should not be used as a weapon for "the Right" or for "the Left."

But what I think is so valuable about Olbermann's research is that it shows, quite dramatically, just how morally bankrupt the Breitbartian version of "journalism" really is. In basically every case, Breitbart bloggers twisted reality to fit their narrative. A real journalist would wait for conclusive evidence before declaring that some person or movement was responsible for rapes or sexual assaults; at Breitbart's sites, they throw out the charges almost daily based on their own interpretations of limited and ambiguous information. It's very much like the Kenneth Gladney case; the video was anything but conclusive; all it showed was Perry Molens pulling Gladney away from McCowan at the end of a fight. Yet Breitbart's gang of hacks declared that the video provided conclusive proof that McCowan and Molens had severely beaten Gladney, and they steadfastly refused to engage in an honest assessment of the evidence.

The "point-by-point response" at Breitbart's sites to Olbermann's segment only helps to reinforce this point. In almost no case do they provide conclusive evidence that an Occupier was responsible for the crimes they are alleging. Rather, they rely on thoughts like, "well, why would someone be at the park at that time," to suggest that one possible interpretation of the limited information is that a person might have been involved. The fact that they're willing to take such limited information and use it to make hyper-dramatic proclamations about entire groups of people shows just how depraved the Breitbart model of "journalism" really is. A real journalist wouldn't make an accusation about a single person without conclusive evidence; Olbermann showed that the Breitbart gang made these unsupported accusations in at least 15 different cases. That's just embarrassingly bad, and should be fifteen times more information needed for credible news groups to realize that they shouldn't give Breitbart's gang the time of day.

1 comment:

  1. you cant expect anyone involved with the dLo/brietbart circle to be rational or truthful in any debate, it doesnt matter if you prove something beyond a shadow of a doubt, they will just double down and continue on with the same argument.

    dLo has at least 25 tweets in the last 7 hours about KO, god knows how many "big" site postings, and devoted some of her radio show to it.

    In their delusional minds they are right, and there's noting anyone can say or do that will prove them wrong.

    It's actually quite useless to even argue with loons like these people, they just don't care! And with a willing media backing them up (at least in DLo's case)they will never stop.

    They are laughing all the way to the bank.

    J

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