Dangerous work, trying to cover the political beat where it concerns Democrats.

Police have identified a man seen on video assaulting a photographer after state Sen. Robert Brown’s Macon City Hall news conference on Thursday.

Macon police spokeswoman Jami Gaudet said he is Malik Brown.

She said police are still investigating whether the senator and the suspect are connected. She said both men are cooperating with the investigation, and police expect to interview both men Friday.

Brown is the same senator who, earlier, remarked that Georgia Republicans were like the KKK.

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Democratic congressional members and candidates have an adversarial relationship with citizen journalists. The latest installment comes courtesy Congressman Ron Klein who accosted blogger of the Lacrosse Watchdog Blog:

Martha Coakley’s muscle knocked a Weekly Standard reporter to the ground:

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From Citizentube.com:

In these 2010 midterm elections, campaigns, voters, and interest groups have continued to innovate new ways to share their political opinions on YouTube. Because YouTube is a platform where anyone can post and share videos globally, you’ve made this platform the vanguard of the political media discussion. Some of these efforts to influence the political dialog on YouTube were more successful than others. Today, we’re sharing who emerged on top of the YouTube elections heap – and we’re going strictly by the numbers.

The top 10 most-viewed videos, sourced from all videos categorized as “News & Politics” on YouTube, are a mixed bag of official campaign videos, user-generated content and videos from interest groups:

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Recognize this boor?  He’s soon-to-be-former-Rep. Bob Etheridge of North Carolina.

Uhh… Bob?  Remember that streetside interview after which, in a perfect world, you should have been brought up on charges of battery?

Maybe, just mabye, on Nov. 2… (more…)

Last week, the DNC announced the launch of “The Accountability Project,” a new website volunteer project “to hold Republican candidates accountable for their claims, their public statements, and their campaign tactics.”  To call the project “grassroots” while a banner at the bottom of the page states that the site is paid for by the Democratic National Committee is surely pushing the frontiers of shamelessness; but desperate times call for desperate measures.  For citizen journalists have been making the news as well as reporting in recent weeks, and not in ways favorable to the left.

On the reporting front, the career of far-left journalist Helen Thomas was ended by a camera-wielding Rabbi posting footage of her anti-Semitic rantings on his website.  Meanwhile, conservative citizen journalists have been physically assaulted, notably by Democrat representative Bob Etheridge and at a campaign event for Illinois senatorial candidate Alexi Giannoulias.   It seems that, when it comes to citizen journalism, liberals can dish it out, but they can’t take it, and in considering just why they are apparently so touchy with respect to this particular manifestation of “new” media, we need to look at the a bigger picture, one which goes beyond the significance of the stories broken, or the merits or otherwise of the tactics employed; what is really remarkable is that conservative “citizen journalists” exist at all, and that they are reaching an increasingly wide audience with their exposure of the antics of liberal activists and Democrat politicians.  You see, it was not supposed to be like this. (more…)

The Washington Post had two pieces on the (forced) resignation of its “conservative” blogger, Dave Weigel: one by ombudsman, Andrew Alexander; and, another by the staff writer, Howard Kurtz.

Both pieces make a bad situation worse: Alexander’s by unintentionally posing uncomfortable questions about how the Post goes about the business of journalism; Kurtz’s piece gets a key piece of information wrong or misquotes Weigel; Weigel responds.  Unsurprisingly, no one involved comes out looking well.

Alexander’s piece first.  In it he asks, one supposes, a rhetorical question.

But his [Weigel's] departure also raises questions about whether The Post has adequately defined the role of bloggers like Weigel. Are they neutral reporters or ideologues?

One response to Alexander’s question might be:

Well, Andrew, that depends on what the WaPo blogger is covering. If said blogger is covering the Left [Lefty Ezra Klein], then the answer is ‘ideologue.’

If the WashPo blogger is covering the Right [Lefty aka "Libertarian" Dave Weigel], then the answer–oh, never mind. I guess the answer to all questions of how the Post covers politics–and most news–can be answered by hiring another Lefty ideologue. At least with Klein, it’s out in the open for all to read, if one chooses to do so.

Long ago, the Washington Post crossed the line from mere “bias” into the realm of information and content management. That is, it’s not so much in the business of slanting news as it is deciding what news will be seen by the paper’s remaining readers. (more…)

Gotta love this: “Will you listen to me instead of babbling?” It’s former senator Alan Simpson, now on the Debt Commission, hosing down a lefty with a bracing does of the truth. Can a liberal handle the truth?

See for yourself:

Good thing it all didn’t turn out like this: (more…)

Amazing… what has happened to North Carolina?

Shame on you, Bob Etheridge.

There you are, walking down the street, when two polite young men pop up and shove video cameras in your puss and ask you sweetly to admit that you are a pawn of every evil plot hatched by the White House, and you have the nerve – the nerve! – to respond, “Who are you?”

Then, when the polite young men refuse to answer, explaining they are young scholars involved in scholarly research, you not only refuse to let go of the chief inquisitor’s wrist, you have the nerve – the nerve! – to fail to admit your guilt.

And then, when the mysterious polite young men post the video on the Internet, you have the nerve – the nerve! – to call a press conference to apologize.

Shame on you, Bob Etheridge.

For apologizing.

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It’s a great song by The Who, but when it comes to Democrats it is also all that matters. It was the question Democrat Congressman Bob Etheridge asked the young man who asked him, simply, if he supported the Obama administration. It is absolutely telling.

Who are you, who are you, who are you? Over and over again Etheridge asked. I counted at least a dozen times that Etheridge asked the young man “Who are you?”—or “tell me who you are?”

Why does it matter who is asking a legitimate question? Just answer it, Bob.

Certainly, the violence displayed by Etheridge is one issue, but another issue is, why should Etheridge care who is asking a legitimate question? I could care less who asked the question and if they want to remain anonymous forever then that is fine with me. They have no obligation to reveal their identity to anyone. The left seem obsessed with trying to find out who dared ask this question to a big, brave Congressman so they can try to discount and destroy the questioner. Let them wonder forever. (more…)

Yes, we here at Big Journalism know there’s an infinite number of “what-if-the-shoe-were-on-the-other-foot” stories when it comes to the MSM. Any story that can redound to a conservative’s discredit will be hyped to the skies:

Anything that puts a Democrat in a bad light — especially if it’s even remotely a judgment call — will be buried:

So it’s no surprise that the Washington Post — the cheerleader for the hometown team, congressional Democrats — basically buried the disgraceful behavior of Rep. Bob Etheridge. From NRO’s Jim Geraghty: (more…)

The question is meant only half-facetiously, of course. Under the current rules of engagement between the media and politicians, it is never right to punch a reporter.  Treat him or her with contempt, dripping condescension, sarcasm, obfuscation, hostility, Heep-ish like servility or even a couple of drinks, but up til now, no punching.

Then along came Bob Etheridge, Congressman from North Carolina, and a new era of hostilities — not only between our august “public servants” and the press, but between the New Mandarin Class and the folks they were ostensibly elected to “serve.”

Of course, Etheridge has issued a classic non-apology apology, the usual suspects (hello, MSNBC) immediately tried to change the subject from the utterly indefensible actions of a minor Congressman to the propriety of two citizens asking the question: “Do you fully support the Obama agenda?”

So poisonous have our politics become, and so corrupt the media that reports on them, that this rather innocuous query has become in part the focus of the story.  What did the kid mean by that? What were his motives in asking such a question? How dare he be “aggressive,” instead of averting his eyes as one of America’s bonzes strolled by? And just who the hell is he, anyway? (more…)

Another viral video broke this morning on Big Government, in this video, two students working on a project see Congressman Etheridge leaving a Nancy Pelosi fundraiser. As the Congressman approaches them, one student (who was holding a video camera) asked Etheridge if he supported the Obama agenda.

When you watch the video you see:

• Etheridge approached them. The student with the camera was recoding from the time one student said hello, and did not move until the congressman swung at him.
• The two students were polite throughout the entire incident.
• The question asked was not pro-Obama or anti-Obama, it was simply “Do you fully support the Obama agenda?”

Now look at the coverage. This is from the Charlotte Observer:

U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge, a Lillington Democrat, was leaving a fundraiser in Washington headlined by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi when two guys with video cameras met him, according to a blog post on Big Government, a site affiliated with conservative commentator and publisher Andrew Breitbart.

The message of that last phrase is since it was published by a website owned by Andrew Breitbart, who is one of those crazy conservatives, it’s not to be trusted. Unless Breitbart is hiding somewhere behind the camera, he had no involvement in making the film.  Additionally, as someone who has written for both Big Government and Big Journalism, the editors of the sites get the posts edit and decide which posts go up and when.  And while I am sure that Andrew puts my posts on his refrigerator each time they appear, as the head man, Breitbart is in charge of general direction; his is the “face” of the sites, etc, like the head of any business. There was no reason to include him in the story in a cheap attempt at guilt (?) by association.

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Democrat Congressman Bob Etheridge assaults a student who asked a pretty straight-forward question on the street and here’s Mediaite’s Colby Hall in an article absurdly titled: Congressman Loses Cool To Students With A Flip Cam, But Comes Out The Hero?

Mediaite wonders: Actions of a “hero?”

Colby Hall, one of the editors of a major news site, is trying to start some kind of meme/talking point that a Congressman laying his hands on a couple of polite college students might make the Congressman some kind of hero. Incredibly, Hall calls this assault ” only partially defensible.” Looks like Hall’s on the same page as the Democrats who just issued talking points ordering their minions to blame Andrew Breitbart (who’s out of the country, by the way) for the assault.

Worse than that, Hall wants to put part of the blame on Big Government, James O’Keefe and Jason Mattera: (more…)

It’s become a familiar story: confronted with almost any form of opposition, the self-righteous left skips over the informed-debate part of the political dialogue and immediately resorts to vitriol, if not outright violence. The “peaceful” and “tolerant” mask slips, and it’s not a pretty sight; the breathtaking moral and spiritual ugliness of these people has to be seen to be believed.

It happened recently when Helen Thomas, journalism’s crazy old aunt in the attic, was asked a question about Israel, was confronted by a flip-cam and thus ended her storied career as, well, journalism’s crazy old aunt in the attic.

Now comes Congresscritter Bob Etheridge (D, N.C.), who flipped out in front of another flip-cam. By now, you’ve all seen this video, which is currently Topic A among the political set:

Seems like a pretty clear case of unprovoked assault, right? Well, not if you’re a Democrat, or one of the die-hard dead-enders who pass for newsreaders over at MSNBC. In this case, it’s the lovely and talented Tamron Hall, dutifully carrying the water for her Democrat overloads as — incredibly — the media defense of Congressman Etheridge begins:

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