Breitbart Bloggers Who Lied About UMSL Are Also Lying About Their Own Identities

After my recent post knocking down the silly arguments of Insurgent Visuals, the group of anonymous cowards who originally distorted the comments of University of Missouri system professors, they've posted a couple of responses on their blog too dumb to dignify with a real response. For any decent person, there's no defense for intentionally editing someone's comments to hide the fact that they were quoting someone else rather than personally endorsing a statement, nor for chopping out the middle of a sentence to completely change its meaning. Like typical right-wing hacks, instead of just admitting that their original edits were fabrications, they instead think the way to respond is to distract from the original point by producing a new litany of highly-edited, out-of-context quotes. And instead of producing a single decent argument, they simply produce an endless string of idiotic claims until everyone else gets too bored to continue. Oh, and they seem to think that they should be praised for "releasing a partial transcript" after they got busted lying, though before they were busted they denied even the possibility that the quotes were taken out-of-context. Finally, they falsely claim that I said that James O'Keefe was involved in the project, though I clearly didn't:

But the real point is, whether or not O'Keefe had anything to do with the execution of this particular smear campaign, his connections with the people involved are relevant.

Anyway, like I said, their posts are not worthy of a real response, but I did get a great tip in the comments of my previous post. Insurgent Videos has an "About" page on their website, which includes pictures and terribly written biographies for their "team."

The website is shoddy enough that you immediately begin to suspect that the profiles are all fake. And that is exactly correct. Since Insurgent Videos first soiled the world with their sad attempt at a smear campaign, Google released a search engine that allows you to search for identical images on the web. And guess what? The pictures Insurgent Videos uses for their "profiles" are fakes.

For example, the photo of "Frank C" is actually of a Norweigan professor:

The photo for "Dallas J." is from another Norwegian:

And "Misty" is a photo from a mail order bride site:


It's so funny that this group, even after being completely busted lying, still publicly pretends to care about the truth. The fact that they use fake photos to hide their identities demonstrates clearly that they know they are not a respectable group and that the garbage they put out is an embarrassment to all thinking people. If they had any brains at all, they would fold up this phony group and just start some new obviously fake front group for the next time they try to push a terrible editing job to the media.

Insurgent Videos Still Whining After Being Busted Lying About Missouri Professors

If you recall, a while ago Andrew Breitbart and Dana Loesch were caught red-handed pushing blatantly dishonest, highly-edited video designed to falsely claim that professors at the University of Missouri St. Louis and Kansas City were advocating violence. They were busted by Media Matters and Crooks and Liars, and I documented how Loesch had led the smear campaign locally by literally chopping words out of the beginning, middle, and end of the professors' sentences to change their meaning.

Like typical right-wing hacks, they won't apologize for their lies even though the full video clearly shows them for what they are. Yet for some strange reason, they refuse to say who actually did the video editing. Why, it's almost as if they know they're guilty.

But, without naming an actual person, they did push off blame about the editing on a group called "Insurgent Videos." And recently, Insurgent Videos along with Breitbart's site have been whining about the fact that various groups noticed connections between this smear job and disgraced smear merchant/clown James O'Keefe. Last week, in a lame attempt to defend Breitbart's sites for inventing a claim that a murder in Savannah had something to do with the Occupy movement, failed Congressional candidate and current editor for Breitbart Joel Pollak wrote the following:

The irony is that Media Matters and Boehlert often make false allegations based on little or no evidence. One small, representative example occurred when controversy erupted over video of radical classes at the University of Missouri in May. A Media Matters blogger speculated, falsely, that conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe “has something to do with this whole smear campaign.” No proof, update or correction was ever posted.

Pollak links to a Big Journalism post falsely claiming that Media Matters said that O'Keefe was "behind" their smear campaign against the University of Missouri system. Similarly, Insurgent Videos has a new, whiny post up, writing the following about Crooks and Liars:

2. C&L blames James O'Keefe
Without any reason to do so other than to assume that if it's 1) video + 2) center-right, it must be James O'Keefe.

Oddly enough, Insurgent Videos does not directly deny that O'Keefe is affiliated with the group.

Notice that in both cases, the groups are attacking a straw man: someone who claims that O'Keefe is "behind" the video. However, in both cases, the blogs were actually just pointing out real connections between people involved in the campaign and O'Keefe, which are relevant whether or not O'Keefe had anything to do with the actual smear campaign.

First, Phil, the student who sent the full videotapes to someone connected with Breitbart and then sat quietly as they lied about his teachers and classmates, was previously involved in an event on the Washington University campus with James O'Keefe. After that event, O'Keefe posted highly edited and dishonest video from a hidden camera that was designed to smear the Washington University administration. Like the UMSL tapes, it failed miserably. And also like the UMSL situation, Phil was initially silent about the smear attempts against his university and later wrote a column explicitly pushing O'Keefe's discredited attacks.

Likewise, as documented at Crooks and Liars, the original "Insurgent Videos" website did list someone named "James O'Keefe" as a contributor. It sure would be a remarkable coincidence if it was a different O'Keefe, and why couldn't Insurgent Videos just say so?

But the real point is, whether or not O'Keefe had anything to do with the execution of this particular smear campaign, his connections with the people involved are relevant. Why? Because he practices a dishonest and discredited brand of journalism, and people who choose to associate with that brand are endorsing the same dishonest tactics. The videos they presented were obviously dishonest, as anyone can see from watching them. So instead of admitting this fact, Breitbart's cronies instead demanded that we just trust the word of Insurgent Visuals and Phil instead of our own lying eyes. But even this lame distraction is flawed, because why would anyone trust people directly associated with James O'Keefe to provide a credible account of a politically-charged controversy?

This whole fiasco was a huge disaster for Breitbart and Loesch, so it's not surprising that they're working overtime to try to rewrite history.

Confronting Breitbart In St. Louis (VIDEO) - Short Version

Enjoy:

Confronting Breitbart In St. Louis (VIDEO)

Several weeks ago, when I heard Andrew Breitbart was going to be in town for a conservative conference, I challenged him to finally have an honest discussion about his smear campaigns against two St. Louis institutions: UMSL and our local SEIU. I have to admit, this is a little personal for me, since Breitbart shamelessly tried to destroy people I know and institutions that do a lot of good for the city, but I also think there are pretty strong objective reasons why Breitbart should have this discussion with me if he wants to maintain his constructed image of someone who's willing to "take on all-comers" (see below).

Despite the fact that I personally tweeted Breitbart at least 20 times over several days, that dozens of other people also asked him to accept the challange over Twitter (see examples here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), including people Breitbart obsessively follows on Twitter like Eric Boehlert of Media Matters, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, Karoli of Crooks and Liars, and Joan Walsh of Salon, and that many other people sent Breitbart Facebook messages asking him to accept the debate challenge, Breitbart not only did not accept the invitation, but was too cowardly to even respond. So when I saw he was going to be in St. Louis again I thought I would take the conversation to the guy who's been running away from real debate on the two topics for a lot longer than just the three weeks I've been asking him to debate.

Breitbart was speaking at a black conservative conference in St. Louis, and my friend Brian Matthews and I had no interest in interfering with any of the conference, so we patiently waited in the lobby for Breitbart to come out. Several conference attendees recognized us, and we had nice conversations with them, including one of the conference organizers Chris Arps (former staffer of Jim Talent). Though the conversations were friendly, several people went back into the room to report that we were outside. Other people left the room and scoped out the layout of the building, and soon Breitbart along with Dana and Chris Loesch were power-walking towards an obscure side-entrance in order to avoid Brian and myself. Fortunately, I was able to catch up with them before the getaway was complete, and so was finally able to confront him with my camera rolling about his dishonest smear campaigns against St. Louis institutions.

Since fully understanding the conversation requires some background knowledge, I'm going to follow the same format as I did with my run-in with Dana Loesch at the Tea Party Rally, posting links and info to help explain some of the points and in particular why Breitbart is full of it. I'll try to put most of the info after the videos, but there are a few points I'd like to make in advance since the conversation is initially a little hard to follow thanks to Breitbart's incoherent ranting:

Breitbart starts of by saying he's here to represent the rights of kitties and to talk about electrocuted cats. I originally had no idea what he was talking about but eventually figured it out. He was referring to some of the video he posted of a labor studies course where a professor describes a tactic unions used in Peru where it was illegal for utility workers to strike. The professor describes the workers releasing cats in powerhouses where the cats would be electrocuted and short out the system. The workers' behavior is pretty morally abhorrent in my opinion, but the professor was not making a moral argument that you should engage in this behavior; rather, she was describing tactics which had previously been used. So this claim by Breitbart has absolutely no relevance to the criticism that his website published deliberately distorted quotes from the professors.

Yes, that is CNN contributor Dana Loesch desperately trying to get attention while I'm speaking with Breitbart. More on her absurd claims below.

The one comment I regret making was joking about Loesch preventing Breitbart's ability to "defend his manhood" after one of the times Breitbart humorously had to tell Loesch to stop interrupting the conversation. Anyone who knows me would know that I don't take the concepts of "manhood" or "machoness" seriously at all, and mostly just think it's funny that anyone cares about them (this is not to say that I have anything against people who find these qualities sexy or admirable or whatever; just that I personally think they're funny). But I realize that something that might be funny among friends can be off-putting when said to strangers, so I regret using that term to make a joke.

At one point in the video, I say that I know more about these cases than Eric Boehlert. By this I certainly didn't intend any disrespect. My only point was that because I'm covering this from St. Louis I personally know many of the people and institutions involved and thus had access to information and context that Boehlert did not. Boehlert did an excellent job covering these events, and I have great respect for him as a writer and a thinker.

There's so much more nonsense and falsehoods from Breitbart (and Loesch) to discuss, but for now I'll post the video and save the further observations and links to the facts below: (apologies for the fact that my phone camera is turned sideways in the middle of the discussion)

OK, so with that, here are some observations about the "discussion:"

Breitbart claims that Kenneth Gladney was called the n-word by Elston McCowan. At best this claim is disputed and I would argue the evidence against it is stronger than the evidence for it. At the trial, which I attended unlike anyone from the tea party, the three defense witnesses all were consistent in saying that what Elston McCowan, a black Baptist Minister, said was the word "negro" rather than The N-word. On the other hand, out of the three witnesses from the prosecution, one said that McCowan used the bizarre expression "son of an n-word," one said he used the expression "n-word" but didn't hear anything about a "son of a..", and Kenneth Gladney, after two years of saying that only Elston McCowan used the n-word, all-of-a-sudden changed his story to now claim that both McCowan and co-defendent Perry Molens called him the n-word. The inconsistencies between the prosecution's witnesses and the fact that Gladney changed his story no doubt counted strongly against the prosecution's case, as the jury took only 40 minutes to reach a "non-guilty" verdict for the SEIU defendants.

Breitbart repeated his absurd conspiracy theory that the White House sent a signal for "union thugs" to beat up innocent tea partiers at the town halls. He implicated the deputy White House Chief of Staff, the head of the AFL-CIO John Sweeney, and the SEIU in his grand conspiracy. Though the claim is clearly absurd that there was some massive government conspiracy coming from the White House to beat up a random guy selling buttons at a townhall, Breitbart actually showed remarkable constraint, at least considering that his sites and the tea party have collectively implicated all of the following groups and entities in their conspiracy theories about that night:

the president of SEIU, the president of the AFL-CIO, the President of the United States, Congressman Russ Carnahan, Carnahan’s spokesperson Sara Howard, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, former OFA Missouri Coordinator Buffy Wicks, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina, Field Director of Health Care for America Now Margarida Jorge, Prosecutor Bob McCullough, St. Louis County Counselor Patricia Reddington, County Executive Charlie Dooley, the NAACP, the ACLU, the head of the St. Louis County Dept. of Health, and even the local animal control department.

If you believe that all of these entities were involved in a massive conspiracy to beat up a random guy in St. Louis, I don't even know what to tell you.

Some people might object to me saying that I thought some of the claims about Sarah Palin's targets causing violence were ridiculous. I don't mind there being a calm discussion about whether the use of such imagery is irresponsible, but I think claiming that it "caused" some particular act of violence is, in general, pretty silly. Considering that Breitbart clearly claims that comments from the White House caused the alleged attack on Gladney, his claims are also absurd.

Breitbart asks, "how many times have I met you?" I respond, "zero." he says, "No. One! You can't even get that right!" Pretty hilarious! I expected better from him.

It's also pretty hilarious that Breitbart continuously demands that I allow him to repeat his same old tired talking points that I've read 100 times. Notice how much of an opportunity I had to speak during the entire conversation? Yet he has the audacity to claim that I won't allow the truth to come out.

Breitbart claims that only Carnahan supporters were allowed in the townhall. This is not true. In fact, Dana Loesch and many tea partiers were in the townhall, as she admits. The claim is based on the fact that in addition to the main entrance there was a side door where some but not all people were being allowed in. My guess is that the door was being used to allow people in who had volunteered to help, but I honestly don't know the exact circumstances. Regardless, it doesn't have much relevance for the question of who started the altercation between McCowan and Gladney.

Regarding Breitbart's claim that he wasn't going out a side door to avoid Brian and myself. There's a pretty obvious main entrance to the building, and he did go out the side door. He first claims that he was going out the side door because that's where they were parked. Hilariously, he then starts to go back into the building and when I ask him why he says it's because he doesn't want Brian and I to see the car. And then he gets picked up in the car! Pretty funny. As noted above, he has clearly been avoiding this conversation for weeks.

He says that he offered to debate "anyone" on the Gladney case for $10,000 donated to charity. I've certainly never seen that offer to "anyone," though I've seen Breitbart routinely offer to debate Eric Boehlert since he knows that Boehlert has good reasons to not want to be put in a situation where the media could sloppily categorize him as "the liberal counterpart of Breitbart." What Boehlert does is far more respectable than what Breitbart does, and a debate would have the potential to cloud that fact. Anyway, I personally am happy to debate Breitbart on the subject, as I've made clear many times. If he's going to continue slandering innocent people, he should take me up on the offer.

Comedy gold: Breitbart said he wouldn't debate me because my tactics are "unfair." When I asked him what's unfair, he replies "you only care about your side." Classic!

As I've described previously, the witnesses for the prosecution that Breitbart cites are not credible. Two witnesses, Harris and Sandra Himes, originally suggested in the police report that they saw how the fight started. Later, Harris Himes said in an interview that his wife did not see how the fight started and that he had been walking away. Harris Himes also has a history of extreme right-wing politics. The other witness, John Mirelli, is seen on video earlier in the evening having to be held back from getting in an altercation with an SEIU member.

To try to get out of the discussion, Breitbart and Loesch demand that I debate a black conservative about Gladney. I told the guy demanding that I debate him, Martin Baker, that I would be happy to debate him later but I was here to talk to Breitbart since Breitbart led the smear campaign. As soon as Breitbart left I found Baker and told him I'd be happy to talk about it. I have video of the discussion that I'll be posting later.

Breitbart ridiculously suggests that you need to watch 31 hours of footage from a labor studies course to see if his web site deliberately distorted the quotes of two professors. Needless to say, you don't need to review every word ever spoken to know that omitting the fact that Judy Ancel was quoting someone else and cutting out the middle of Don Giljim's comments is a deliberate misrepresentation of what they said. I am glad, however, that Breitbart and Loesch admitted that they saw the full footage before it was posted on the site and Breitbart said he "stands by the video." Now they have no excuse for their dishonesty.

Breitbart's argument that UMSL should post the full 31 hours of video is a red herring. UMSL is prohibited by law from releasing the personal information of students, and for good reason. Academic freedom is, in part, based on the idea that students should be allowed to explore academic ideas in a classroom without fear of retribution or persecution. Breitbart's decision to post video of the students' comments on a public website is despicable. As for his suggestion that UMSL publish a transcript of the entire class with student names blocked out, I suspect that the reason they're not doing that is the same reason that he won't do it: it would be an absurdly time-intensive project.

Loesch's ridiculous comments deserve their own section:

At the beginning of the video Loesch asks "Does Washington University know that it's employee is here using its resources to smear private citizens?" It's true that I'm a graduate student at Washington University, but why Loesch thinks that I'm "using university resources" by engaging in a non-academic discussion on a Saturday afternoon in the summer is beyond me. Seems a little anti-free speech, doesn't it?

Loesch claims, and has been claiming for a year, that I'm an "SEIU blogger." I've never been paid anything by SEIU and have no idea why anyone would call me that. Loesch claims that someone referred to me as an "SEIU blogger" on a video, and suggests that someone from SEIU made that claim at an NAACP press conference. I'm skeptical that anyone from SEIU said that since I don't think anyone from the group was even at the press conference she mentioned, but whomever said it would be wrong.

Loesch also claims that I "laughed" at the same NAACP press conference when someone called Gladney an "Uncle Tom." It's true that I was at the event, but I'm sure I didn't laugh. I remember feeling uncomfortable with the comments. Another manufactured smear.

Finally, Loesch disgustingly claimed that I was "stalking her children," another tea party conspiracy theory I've heard before. I previously had no idea what the claim was referring to, but Loesch explained that it was in reference to the fact that, "you clicked the website where my children are on." In other words, despite the fact that I have never, ever, said anything about her children in any context nor do I know anything about them or want to, she's claiming that I "stalk her children" because one time I linked to a post on her Mom Blog that she had referenced from her political Twitter account. That's pretty despicable behavior from a CNN analyst, or from anyone for that matter.

So there you have it: more than you ever wanted to know about the dishonesty of Andrew Breitbart and Dana Loesch. It's no wonder that Breitbart is so afraid to have a real debate on these topics where both sides can be presented in full.

Breitbart and Loesch Attempt to Reanimate Zombie Lies About UMSL/UMKC

Now that their smear campaign against SEIU has embarrassingly fallen apart, Andrew Breitbart and Dana Loesch are attempting to revitalize another failed attempt to smear a St. Louis institution. If you recall, Loesch and Breitbart shamelessly pushed the idea that professors at UMSL and UMKC were "advocating violence" in their labor studies class. After Media Matters and Crooks and Liars exposed the fact that these videos were heavily edited, the student who leaked the videos, Phil, wrote a post at Big Government attempting to change the subject from the dishonest edits to his objections to the course content. Needless to say, downgrading from claiming that professors were "advocating violence" back to the standard right-wing attacks on academic freedom was not very impressive, and the whole thing was a huge blow to the credibility of Loesch, Breitbart, and the student.

Now Phil is back with new allegations, attempting to spin emails obtained in a freedom of information request into a grand conspiracy. The whole thing might just be an attempt to distract from the embarrassing Gladney verdict, but it can be fairly easily responded to, and I do so here.

First, Phil claimed that university officials were "conspiring to punish" him. He admitted leaking all 30 hours of video of the course to a number of his "friends" (whom he doesn't name, naturally). The video, including out-of-context clips of other students making comments in class, was later posted on youtube without the permission of any of the other students. This at least appeared to be a violation of the other students' privacy rights, since they had the expectation of being allowed to speak freely in class without their comments being broadcast to the world, as well as the course Acceptable Use Policy and copyright law. People pay tuition money to attend class; you obviously cannot just hand out 30 hours of video of the entire course for free. In other words, Phil sure appeared to violate the rules of UMSL and potentially the law, and the administrators were discussing the appropriate response to him violating the rules. Along those lines, they said such controversial things as:

Clearly the AUP was violated as was the copyright.

- UMKC Vice Provost Mary Lou Hines Fritts

If he has violated the policies,he should be barred from the use of our campus technology in the future.

- UMSL Provost Glen Cope

Also, do you know the name of the student who assisted ripping the videos? If he/she is a student registered at UMSL, then we would like to proceed with student conduct actions relative to the rules that have been broken (appropriate usage, etc).

- UMSL Provost Glen Cope

The administrators were discussing whether they should punish a student who appeared to have violated university rules. This is what Phil calls "conspiring to punish" him.

Phil also claims that the school "no longer wanted to talk" to him after he showed up with an attorney because "they discovered they couldn't bully a powerless student." In the absence of any evidence, Phil apparently decides to pretend that he can divine the motives and inner thoughts of university officials, and so completely invents a narrative via his imagination. I can't claim to know why they dropped the investigation either, but this was included in his documents:

As you are no longer a student at the University of Missouri-Saint Louis, please disregard my latter dated May 5, 2011.

-UMSL Assistant to the Vice Provost D'Andre Braddix - June 9

Now it's my understanding that Phil's apparent violations of the rules would not affect his grade in the class, but rather his future privileges. But since he was no longer a student at UMSL (having graduated from Wash U with credits from the UMSL class), the other disciplinary actions against him would have been meaningless. So that's a perfectly good explanation for why they dropped the investigation that doesn't need to rely on any unfounded assumptions about secret, diabolical motivations of university officials.

Another allegation of Phil was that the university was "relying" on liberal blogs for their information. He also suggested that UMSL Provost Glen Cope didn't watch all of the videos. His evidence for that claim? The following:

I would not be sure of the veracity of what he says, given the video experience and my viewing of videos from the class. I've reviewed videos from the class, and so have people from UMKC. There is nothing in the content of the class, though quite controversial, that if[sic] inappropriate for a political science/labor studies class. People may object to many things that are taught and discussed in many classes if they had the opportunity to do so, since universities cover controversial subjects. this is truly an academic freedom issue.

- UMSL Provost Glen Cope

Breitbart flunky (and failed politician) Joel Pollak managed to squeeze this ridiculous interpretation out of the statement:

If she had seen all of the videos, Cope would have said so, and would have been certain whether Phil was telling the truth or not.

Actually, Phil said things in his blog post that were questions of interpretation and also referred to things said out of class, so the claim that "she would be certain" about Phil's testimony is false and lazy analysis.

Pollak further cites this quote as evidence that the university was getting their information from "liberal blogs:"

Media Matters did our work for us in showing how it's edited.

- UMSL Senior Vice Chancellor Ron Gossen

But this quote was not referring to reviewing the evidence, but rather the presentation of the evidence. Media Matters had done the work of producing a video that showed how the original quotes were taken out of context. The University did not need to rely on Media Matters to see whether the videos were misleadingly edited since anyone with a functioning brain could see that. However, even after knowing that, the videos had to be presented to show the evidence.

The other "evidence" that the university was "relying" on "liberal blogs" was simply that they had sent out links to posts at Crooks and Liars and Media Matters. But the university had also sent out links to articles at Big Journalism and Big Government, and there was no evidence that any of these blogs influenced how they approached the situation.

One last note: Phil took issue with one of the emails saying that he has a history of this kind of thing. He claims he doesn't. I don't know if he does or not, but I will say that he participated in the gulag display where James O'Keefe attempted to smear Washington University officials with secretly recorded and edited video.

But I'll agree that it would be a mistake to assume that Phil took the class for the sole purpose of sabotaging it. However, the real question is whether he broke the rules of the course or the law, and that is precisely what the officials were looking into.

And, furthermore, all of this is a distraction from the real issue that Breitbart and Loesch deceptively edited video and audio to put inflammatory words in the mouths of the course instructors, and that Phil allowed this dishonest information to fester until it was exposed as a hoax.

Democracy Now Exposes the Dishonest Smear Campaign of Loesch and Kinder

Democracy Now had Judy Ancel on as a guest in studio and did a great job laying bare the nasty smear campaign against UMSL and UMKC led by CNN contributor Dana Loesch:
Also of note: they criticized the Post-Dispatch for failing to call out the lies.

Dana Loesch Led Despicable Smear Campaign Against University of Missouri System

The past two weeks, Dana Loesch has led a smear campaign against two course instructors at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) and University of Missouri-Saint Louis (UMSL) based on shamelessly chopped-up video designed to create a false narrative. Two days ago, UMSL called the videos "distorted" and "definitely taken out of context" in a written statement and even right-leaning local CBS station KMOX finally reported on the misleading editing job. The fact that Loesch is being dishonest should not be news to any readers of this blog, but this case is substantially different from the norm for a couple of reasons. First, it's different because the instructors targeted by the smear campaign have already received numerous threats based on the right-wing's deceptive attacks. And second, in this case, Loesch has unquestionably been the leader in pushing out the manufactured lies recently debunked by Media Matters and Crooks and Liars. Her role in this story is similar to the role Andrew Breitbart played in the Shirley Sherrod story.

On Monday of last week, the day the story broke, Loesch repeatedly advertised having "exclusive audio" on the smear campaign on her radio show:
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Here's Loesch on her Monday radio show playing her"exclusive" audio that suggests that a UMKC professor said, "Violence is a tactic. It's to be used when it's the appropriate tactic," and implies that an instructor at UMSL endorses the use of industrial sabotage:


This, as shown in unedited versions of the tape, is completely false. Ancel was actually quoting a character from a movie shown in class, At the River I Stand, which emphasizes the success of nonviolent tactics:


And in the full video (which Loesch' friends chopped in the middle and at the end) Giljim explicitly stated that violent tactics do more harm than good:


At no point in the show did Loesch explain the full context of the professors' remarks.. Loesch repeated the claim later in the show, again calling it "exclusive" content, and characterizing the professors' attitudes as, "oh well, violence is all right. Ho hum. It's what we have to do."


Here's Loesch misleadingly quoting Ancel and saying that this is in the context of "spreading communism via unionization:"


In this video, she suggests the class is advocating for "violent means...for an end that we want."


There's a lot more, but you get the idea. Loesch was shamefully pushing completely dishonest interpretations of the videos and using them to rile up her listeners. While calling for the teachers to be fired, she compared the class to the shooting at Virginia Tech and called it "institutionalized violence:"


Then Loesch told her listeners to harass Ancel via email over the dishonest quotes:

As I mentioned earlier, both Judy Ancel and Don Giljim have been the subject of numerous threats since Loesch and Breitbart started pushing the distorted videos.

Just think about that. Loesch and Breitbart create completely distorted smear videos, then direct their followers to contact them, resulting in the instructors getting threats. I mean, it's bad enough for them to send their hordes after people when they're using their standard misinformation, but in this case they actually manufactured the story themselves, riled people up, and then directed those people to send angry messages to the instructors based on false information. What could possibly justify such despicable behavior?

One thing that wouldn't really justify the behavior, but might at least lessen it's level of despicableness, would be if Loesch really had no clue that the videos were distorted. However, she repeatedly has claimed that she knows about the content of the full videos.

Here's Loesch claiming that she "can't wait" to release the full videos:


She also has stated that she's seen the full 30 hours of footage multiple times:




And she repeatedly bragged about having "exclusive" content:


So let's put in context what Loesch is saying. She is admitting she had access to the full videos. Yet she is amazingly pretending that they were not edited out of context. In order for her to be telling the truth, she would have to literally believe that the quote, "Violence is a tactic. And it's to be used when it's the appropriate tactic." is identical to this quote:

...he represented the kind of thinking that went into the Student Underground Coordinating Committee and then later, probably-- Well, coinciding with the Black Panthers, I'd say. You know, he said "Violence is a tactic, and it's to be used when it's appropriate -- the appropriate tactic."

Whether they-- They never come back to him to ask him what he thought of the window smashing in that march. Or whether or not that was done by them, or others, or provocateurs. We don't know that.

No one, not even Dana Loesch, could believe those quotes are equivalent. Thus, she deliberately distorted information, pushed it out, and used lies to get her followers to send angry (and possibly threatening) messages to the university instructors she smeared. And yet CNN seems to think it can still have a shred of credibility with her as a contributor. Truly mind-boggling.

Dana Quixote Gloriously Defeats Imaginary Soros Bloggers!

Dana Loesch was extremely proud of herself for valiantly defeating invisible "Soros bloggers" who live in her head and claimed that Adam Sharp entered the UMSL classroom where Don Giljim was teaching.

The only problem? Nobody actually said that.

However, we did say this:

Sharp went to the UMSL campus specifically to pester the instructor and students. In fact, the public announcements all stated that Giljim was not even going to be in class.

Sharp was trespassing on the UMSL campus in a building that's supposed to be restricted to students, faculty, and staff.

Sharp appeared to be trying to follow Giljim into the classroom.

Sharp filmed students in the classroom.

Sharp pestered students as they left the classroom.

Sharp's friend Ben Evans dared students to "take a swing" at him as they were waiting outside the police station to see what happened.

Loesch and Breitbart Use Student As Human Shield

Yesterday, after UMSL declared that the highly edited videos Dana Loesch and Andrew Breitbart were pushing were "distorted" and "definitely taken out of context" and the St. Louis media finally started covering the blatant dishonesty, the Breitbartians new spin was to link to a long post on Big Government from the student who had originally leaked the video arguing that the class was biased. I'm sure the student posted of his own accord, and probably though he had good reasons for doing so, but it seems pretty obvious to me that he is being used by people who are trying to deflect blame and cover their own dishonesty.

Basically, the student is severely damaging his own credibility for the sake of minimal gain for anyone other than Loesch and Breitbart. First, video was leaked of his fellow students without their permission, and so openly declaring that he leaked the video with the flimsy excuse that he distributed them "in their entirety to a number of my friends in order to obtain other opinions on the propriety of what occurred in the class" does not present him in a very good light. The student also remained silent for two weeks while clearly dishonestly edited videos were being publicized and pushed around the internet by people he shared the video with, so his coming out with a statement now is not very credible. And his statements don't really add much new information; we already heard the inflammatory selectively edited quotes, and we already saw that they're willing to pick and choose information to push their agenda, so why would the media now want to believe a written account after just being burned by bogus videos? So the student's testimony is extremely unlikely to influence anyone in the media or the broader public other than the fringers at the Breitbart's sites, and the "Right" does not gain anything from his account. In fact, the only people who gain anything are Loesch, Breitbart, and the cronies who (badly) edited the videos: a group that is now fighting for nothing other than "plausible deniability."

On the other hand, the student loses quite a bit by "outing himself" and implicitly condoning the videos. Even though he didn't do the malicious editing himself, and though he clearly wants to look like he's presenting a more balanced view, he is now, for the rest of his life, inextricably linked to the dishonest editing tactics of a few of Breitbart's hacks. They get to use the cover that they were just presenting the information that the student was suggesting, while he is linked to videos that were dishonestly edited by someone else. It really was a pretty unfortunate decision by the student, unless he is planning on working only for people in the future who care nothing about credibility.

The student claims that the class was "biased." Though certain neoMcCarthyists will inevitably agree based solely on the fact that a communist organizer was allowed to present in the class, most people will find the claim to be pretty subjective and will not have the desire to sit through 18 hours of video footage (even if it was available) to see if the class really was "unfair." From what I've seen and heard (including interviewing two students from the class), I don't think the class content was inappropriate. But even if it was, this would in no way justify doctoring videos to falsely claim that professors were "advocating violence" or "teaching industrial sabotage." I can't plant heroin on Andrew Breitbart, call the police, then wait until I get caught to say, "oh well, he doesn't really sell heroin, but I just wanted to draw attention to the fact that he has bad personal hygiene." Lying is lying, distorted video is distorted video, and the student has made a bad mistake of allowing himself to be a fall guy for Loesch and Breitbart, who should really bear the responsibility of pushing fundamentally dishonest information.

Update: KMOX Gets It Right This Time Around

With the new UMSL statement, KMOX set the record straight:

The University has released a statement concluding that the original videos showcased by the website BigGovernment.com “were definitely taken out of context, with their meaning highly distorted through splicing and editing.”

In one instance, the edited video omitted a comment by instructor Don Giljum saying that intimidation tactics would not work in this day and age. In another clip, the BigGovernment video cut out a portion of a statement by a Kansas City instructor in which she attributed a statement condoning labor violence to a historical labor figure — making it sound as if she was condoning violence.

Though I have a strong feeling that the political inclinations of many of the people who work at KMOX are quite far away from mine, I think the fact they were finally able to set the record straight speaks highly of their commitment to being a hard news organization.

New Statement from UMSL on Breitbart/Loesch Smears

Sounds like UMSL made the right decision:

Dear Colleagues,

We have finally completed viewing the videos originating at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) from the UMSL course Introduction to Labor Studies. The excerpts that were made public showing the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) instructor Don Giljum and students as well as the UMKC instructor and students were definitely taken out of context, with their meaning highly distorted through splicing and editing from different times within a class period and across multiple class periods.

As stated previously, our campus supports academic freedom, civility, diversity, open discourse and the pursuit of knowledge. We support the academic freedom of faculty, staff and students at UMSL. Contrary to some reports, Don Giljum has not been fired from the campus faculty, and in fact, is completing the course; he remains eligible to teach at UMSL. We sincerely regret the distress to him and others that has been caused by the unauthorized copying, editing and distribution of the course videos.

During the past two weeks, we have received communications over a wide spectrum of viewpoints, and we appreciate people letting us know what they think. We have learned more about video and Internet technologies that can be beneficial or detrimental to positive, civil discourse, and security issues related to the use of such media. We shall explore ways to improve security in the use of electronic media for instruction, research and other activities.
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Sincerely,
Tom George
Chancellor
Professor of Chemistry and Physics

Glen Cope
Provost
Professor of Political Science and Public Policy Administration

Reminder: you can see just how dishonest the Loesch/Breitbart videos are here and here.

KMOX Allows False Information to Fester On Website for Over a Week

I had a nice conversation with KMOX reporter Kevin Killeen earlier this week. Unfortunately, it followed the same pattern I've experienced many other times with the CBS affiliate that hosts Rush Limbaugh in St. Louis: they're very nice and polite, they say I raise good points, and yet they fail to fix the problem.

KMOX was one of the first St. Louis media outlets to pick up the Breitbart smear story, and they reported it without noting Breitbart's extensive history of dishonesty. In the article, Killeen wrote that "Giljum appears to tell students that being a labor activist is not always calm discussion," (with an accompanying quote that's been edited to change the meaning) and that "Ancel appears to be telling students that violence is a legitimate tool of organized labor." Both of these claims and their corresponding video clips have been shown to be unambiguously false.

Keep in mind the serious consequences of this kind of dishonest attack: both Ancel and Giljim have received numerous threats based on the distorted videos. So by unquestioningly passing on videos from a source that has been shown to be dishonest on numerous occasions, KMOX is facilitating threats and intimidation against two innocent people.

On Friday of last week, I emailed links to Killeen with video that showed, conclusively, that the Breitbart sites had taken the video out-of-context. He responded by thanking me for the links, and telling me that he'd follow up on Monday of the next week with UM officials because he "already had a full assignment sheet." I didn't understand why he would need a quote from the University of Missouri just to point out that the original video was distorted and his reporting about it was wrong, and I also didn't understand why a news organization would decide to wait three days to correct a falsehood, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

The next week rolled around and Killeen still did not write any correction. So I sent the following message to Killeen:

Last week, you published a story based on videos from professional con man Andrew Breitbart. The links I sent you included clear video evidence that Breitbart's videos were edited completely out-of-context to put words into the instructors mouths. For example, you wrote that it "appeared" that Ancel was saying violence is an appropriate tactic, when in fact she was quoting a character from a movie to promote class discussion. I'mhttphttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif curious how long you want misinformation to sit on the KMOX web site without being corrected.

I received no response from Killeen and in fact he wrote a new story that doubled down on the original dishonesty. His new story focused on the fact that UMSL claims Giljim resigned voluntarily, and Giljim said he was pressured, but it made no mention of the fact that the full videos show that the quotes were distorted. In fact, it doubled down on the original dishonesty by linking to a sound clip from Dana Loesch (BTW, a competitor to KMOX's Mark Reardon) that repeated the exact same falsehoods.

At this point, I called Killeen and asked him why he was not fixing this false information. He responded that he thought that the editor had added the links I sent him (Media Matters and Crooks and Liars), and that he would try to get them to change the story. I just checked back today and, unfortunately, the only "change" they made was to add the Media Matters and Crooks and Liars links to the "related content" section at the end.

Needless to say, these changes are virtually meaningless. As a radio station, the main audience is the people who hear the original report on the radio, who have been provided with no reason to question the original, false story. Out of the significantly smaller audience who read the stories online, very few are likely to come back to the site several days later to check to see if there are any updates. And of that small group, how many are going to notice a change in the "related content" that doesn't appear in the main story?

KMOX put out factually incorrect information. They were notified of this fact over a week ago, and still have not updated their original story nor issued a correction. They wrote a story based on Breitbart's smear video, yet have refused to write a story based on video that proves it to be false. And, in fact, they have not even adjusted the content of their claims in the new stories they've written since the longer videos came out.

I personally am not sure how KMOX expects people to regard them as a purveyor of trustworthy information when they so flippantly disregard information that shows their reporting to have been mistaken. It's one thing for a news service to make a mistake; it's quite another for them to hide this mistake even after it's been revealed. The later amounts to intentionally misleading their audience. Hopefully, they will move quickly to fix this mistake.

Update: They set the record straight with a new story.

Post-Dispatch's False Notion of "Neutrality" Contributes to Demise of Journalism

The Post-Dispatch has a full-length article today about the Breitbart smear attacks on UMSL. The author Tim Barker says that academic freedom is at the heart of the dispute, and I agree that it certainly is an important consideration here and applaud Barker for emphasizing this point. Professors at American universities have advocated for all kinds of controversial positions, pro-union and anti-union, communist and libertarian, pro-life and pro-choice. Professors at American universities have also advocated for using torture against political prisoners, for the death penalty, and have argued that we should go to war to protect our political interests even when our country is under no threat from others. So yes, academic freedom is a central part of the American higher education system, and the right-wing's attempt to single out and suppress views on the liberal side of the spectrum is disgusting and stands opposed to the idea of free speech that they pretend to care about.

However, this particular case is about more than just academic freedom. This is about Andrew Breitbart and Dana Loesch continuing their pattern of blatantly distorting video to put words into people's mouths as part of a systematic attack on all of the institutions they don't like. They lied and claimed that Judy Ancel told her class that "Violence is a tactic. It's to be used when it's the appropriate tactic." In fact, as was clearly revealed in the longer videos, Ancel was quoting a character in a movie. They chopped of a quote from Don Giljim after the word "and...." and added a completely new sentence to the end to claim that he was advocating industrial sabotage. In fact, as was clearly revealed in the longer videos, he explicitly said that such tactics are "counterproductive" in the segments chopped out by Breitbart. Yet, the Post-Dispatch fundamentally fails to point out these blatant lies and distortions, and instead settles with quoting some people who said the videos were taken out-of-context and saying, "Other sites, including Mediamatters.org, have since published their own pieces attacking Breitbart's work."

The problem is that Media Matters didn't just "attack" Breitbart's work; they released video that showed it to be completely false. And it is not a matter of subjective interpretation whether the videos were edited out-of-context; if you chop off a person's sentence to say something different than what it actually said, you have thereby falsely presented their views. These are not matters of interpretation where you can settle for getting quotes.

I understand the notion of "neutrality" at work in the Post-Dispatch's article. They don't want to be accused of "bias," so instead of showing the longer videos or simply saying that Breitbart's videos were distorted, they'd rather get quotes from both sides. Such is the idea of "neutrality" that is one of the central flaws of modern journalism; they divorce themselves from an objective reality where there are these strange things called "facts," and instead settle for a world in which neutrality always means halfway between two positions, no matter how closely those positions align with the real world. Thus if Breitbart claims that Giljim is secretly a member of Al Qaeda who's been training in Yemen for the past 50 years, and Giljim releases video documenting his time in the St. Louis region for the past 50 years, the modern "neutral" reporter just gets quotes from both sides and calls it a day.

But not only is this notion of neutrality fundamentally flawed as it denies the existence of facts about the world, it also is inherently contradictory. As Barker (the author of this piece) decides to write a story, he has to commit to standards of journalism and reporting that guide his work. He knows that he can't simply chop up people's quotes and rearrange their words to make it appear that they said something that they really didn't. His commitment to standards of journalism makes him fundamentally not neutral when it comes to the practice of reporting. Barker cannot be "neutral" as to whether it's OK to distort quotes or not, because being neutral on that question would mean that he's a terrible reporter, which he's not.


So once he's staked out a position on the practices of honest journalism, he also can no longer be neutral on what it is that Breitbart's minions do. They engage in the very practices that Barker has to reject in order to be a good reporter. They violate the trust of the people who listen to them and willfully manipulate their beliefs to push a particular political agenda. Barker, as someone who cares about the practice of journalism, can not coherently apply the false notion of "neutrality" to what Breitbart does because, by doing so, he would be rejecting his own standards.

Furthermore, Breitbartism is a competitor to the kind of journalism that Barker and the Post-Dispatch practice. Breitbart makes no bones about the fact that he's trying to make his style of journalism the norm for the right. So he has declared war on legitimate reporters like those who work at the Post-Dispatch, and would be happy to destroy them. And as long as the Post-Dispatch fails to stand up for their standards of journalism by (legitimately) criticizing liars and smear-merchants, they are allowing dishonest characters to continue to erode the idea of "journalism."

Like the USDA during the Sherrod scandal, like NPR, and now like UMSL, the Post-Dispatch is trying to remain neutral with people who have ultimately declared war on them. The continue to try to avoid short-term controversy by failing to call out liars. But these minor short-term reprieves are ultimately meaningless, because the longer they continue to empower people who are fundamentally opposed to the type of honest reporting the Post practices, the more they are ensuring their own demise.

Post-Dispatch Transcribes Breitbart Smear While Videos Prove Exact Opposite

Sadly, Tim Barker at the Post-Dispatch dutifully transcribed a smear job from professional con man Andrew Breitbart today by linking to Big Government and failing to point out that the videos were edited to create completely false narratives:

He has been under fire along with a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City for their teaching of a shared class dealing with labor unions, politics and society. The issue popped up after the biggovernment.com website published a pair of videos edited from some 30 hours or classroom lectures.

Unbelievably, despite the fact that I sent Barker links to videos that prove that Big Government was lying as early as Monday, Barker does not say a word about the blatantly dishonest edits from Big Government. For example, Big Government (and Dana Loesch) repeatedly claimed that Judy Ancel told the class "Violence is a tactic. It's to be used when it's the appropriate tactic," while the full videos clearly showed that she was quoting a person from the movie At the River I Stand to promote class discussion. Her full quote:

ANCEL: The one guy in the film, one of the guys who had been one of the young, um, SNCC types, said

[crosstalk]

-- he represented the kind of thinking that went into this student on the coordinating committee and then later probably -- well, coinciding with the Black Panthers. You know, he said violence is a tactic and it's to be used when it's appropriate, when it's an appropriate tactic. Whether -- they never come back to him to ask him what he thought of the window-smashing in that march or whether or not that was done by them or others or provocateurs. We don't know that.

Why do so many modern day reporters find it so difficult to simply point out the truth?

Exclusive Video! Tea Party Tries to Provoke Violence At UMSL!

We posted an interview on Monday about an altercation at UMSL where Adam Sharp reportedly trespassed into a restricted building and attempted to harass students and faculty. Both students mentioned that as they were waiting outside the police station to see if Don Giljim was OK, they were approached by a tea partier (later identified as Ben Evans) who was baiting them to "take a swing" at him. We've obtained exclusive video that shows this to be true.

First, here are shortened clips of the students explaining what had happened. The first student wanted to remain anonymous for the time being:



Here's the second student, Kevin:



And here's the exclusive video showing Ben Evans of the St. Louis Tea Party saying "I'd love to see you take another swing:"



Of course, just because the tea party goes out of their way to try to provoke violence doesn't mean that it's OK to be violent. In fact, that's exactly what they're looking for. But this does show quite clearly what their intentions are when they try to pester students and faculty at a college campus. All of this is the stuff they leave out of their highly edited version of events.

Exclusive Interview: Breitbart's Provocateurs Trespass at UMSL To Harass and Intimidate Students(AUDIO)

Early last week, Dana Loesch and Andrew Breitbart's websites started pushing a story claiming that professors at UMKC and UMSL were encouraging their students to use violence and industrial sabotage to further political ends. The videos immediately looked sketchy, with strangely edited clips cobbled together. Though the bureaucracies of the universities and the unions slowed down a response to the attacks from well-known con artist Andrew Breitbart, UMKC professor Judy Ancel released a statement documenting that the videos were maliciously edited to put words into the mouths of the professors. On Friday, Crooks and Liars and Media Matters both released video that clearly demonstrated that the story being pushed by Loesch and Breitbart was completely fabricated via creative chop-shop editing.

In order to distract people from the fact that they were busted lying, St. Louis tea party provocateur Adam Sharp, who's blogged on Breitbart's sites before, apparently trespassed on the UMSL campus on Saturday to harass students and instructor Don Giljim. Sharp attempted to film students in their classroom, pestered them as they walked out of class with questions like "do you condone violence," and was arrested and charged with trespassing. Don Gilgim was also taken to the police station because there was an altercation, and as students waited outside of the police station, another tea partier approached them and began taunting them and daring them to "take a swing" at him. This is after a week where the tea party violated students' privacy by putting videos on YouTube showing comments made for the purpose of classroom discussion.

Needless to say, the students felt victimized by this assault on their ability to learn in a safe environment without being harassed by extremists. We were able to get two exclusive interviews with students from the UMSL class who witnessed Adam Sharp's attempts to barge into their classroom. I think both of them do an excellent job laying out just how disturbing it is that the tea party is now trying to harass students and professors on college campuses and interfere with people's ability to learn and speak freely. Though the students chose to remain anonymous for this interview, one (Kevin) will be available for media requests, as well as other students from that class. The first student we interviewed is studying for finals and trying to recover from the major disruption in her life caused by the tea party invasion of her classroom, and she prefers to remain off-the-radar for the next several days.

Please check out these interviews which (1) further debunk the lie that the course taught students to use violence as a tactic or engage in industrial sabotage, (2) detail Sharp's incredibly creepy behavior of trespassing and trying to barge into a college classroom, and (3) document the tea party blatantly trying to provoke attacks from college students who were just trying to learn:

First Interview


Second Interview (Kevin)


I should note that I heard that instructor Don Giljim was charged with damaging Sharp's camera. I certainly do not condone violence, even against people who are doing everything in their power to provoke it. Sharp invaded the sanctity of their classroom in order to create a story that distracts from the fact that Breitbart and Loesch were caught lying, and he just might be successful.