Every movement in history experiences challenges that cause it to morph from the purpose and design of its founders, usually in an effort to stay alive.

The incredible world-wide movement of citizen journalism is no different. In chapter one of our* book titled “Handbook for Citizen Journalists,” I point out that the movement is happening with no organized structure, no inspirational luminary, no headquarters, no power center, little or no funding, usually no government help and often government interference, no mass marketing strategy, no fixed standards–and most significantly–wild innovation.

The result is that many expressions of citizen journalism have been seen some unexpected successes and some well-funded failures. As time passes and more entrepreneurial journalists find ways to take advantage of the gap left by understaffed newspapers and developing technologies, more changes are sure to come. (more…)

Lech Walesa, former president of Poland, champion in the fight against communism, and winner of the Liberty Medal and Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1989, has decided to not make a trip to New York in support of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Last week the AP reported that Walesa was backing the Occupy “movement” and considered traveling to New York in support of the growing nationwide mob activity that currently plagues the United States. However, when former Illinois gubernatorial candidate Adam Andrzejewski, (For the Good of Illinois)  found out about this, he quickly reached out to his contacts in Poland to alert the former president to the truth behind this radical movement.

“We made the point that the political themes of Occupy Wall Street may have started out with some of the principles that we share, but OWS themes were rapidly being morphed into anti-freedom and anti-liberty messages.  At the core is the want for a big, powerful central government to dominate the lives of individual citizens.” -Andrzejewski

In his write-up last night at BigGovernment.com, Andrzejewski stated that with the help of BigGoverment and other sources, he was able to convey an accurate picture of the Occupy movement, particularly that it is “…organized by anarchists, Code Pink, the American Communist movement, jihadists, anti-Israel, socialist, and anti- free enterprise interests.” After reviewing this information about the true nature of the demonstrations, Walesa and his team withdrew their support and will not be attending any Occupy protests.

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Considering how incredibly rare it is to find balanced global warming reporting in the mainstream media, Noel Sheppard’s 4/24 NewsBusters headline was worthy of a double-take: “Retired Anchorman Apologizes for Presenting Both Sides of Global Warming Debate.” Having written an American Thinker article last year where I quantified the outright bias at the PBS NewsHour to be a ratio of 3 “skeptic” to 200+ “pro-Al Gore/IPCC” going back to 1996, I was puzzled. Who could it be?

I was disappointed to see a name I didn’t recognize – imagine it being NBC’s Tom Brokaw. The bigger disappointment for me was in Sheppard’s third and fourth paragraph reproduction of the original Duluth Budgeteer article, where it said:

The TV newsman’s mea culpa about having misreported climate change came after of years of treating the story the same as he would any other, requiring the views of two opposing parties…

….climate change is not a pro or con issue; it’s a scientific fact. And journalists who work to “balance” a story present an inaccurate picture when they give equal weight to sources promulgating inaccurate facts.

The significance of that eludes most people, but I’d been researching the origins of the fossil fuel funding accusation against skeptic scientists for 16+ months, two of my articles about it are at Breitbart pages here and here, among a pile of others I’ve written. For me, the words “equal balance”/”equal weight” in reference to people pushing “inaccurate facts” jumped right off the page as yet another repetition of 15-year old talking points consolidated by anti-skeptic book author Ross Gelbspan and his associates at the Ozone Action enviro-advocacy group in 1996. For those not familiar with that group, just think Greenpeace because its founder John Passacantando merged Ozone Action with Greenpeace USA in 2000 and took over as its new executive director. (more…)

From KXMB, North Dakota:

Some questions are being raised in Wahpeton about illegal searches and seizures. A 17-year old aspiring journalist was video taped being arrested for what he claims no reason, or probable cause then posted the video online.

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Apparently, KMOX has been slipping in the ratings during certain spots, but that’s no reason for the older-skewed heritage station to derelict the duty of objectivity in news and parrot a far-left propaganda site in lieu of publishing original content.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what KMOX did.

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.

Two points.

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I don’t blame him. I’d leave them up, too, and even populate them in various accounts all over Youtube and Vimeo.

Rebel Pundit has received the following threatening letter via our YouTube account message inbox, from a YouTube user known as stephaniepinta.

Concerning one of your videos
You have a video of a gentleman at the tea party rally in Chicago this past tax day (Monday). I am requesting that you please remove it from Youtube as well as your website “rebelpundit.com“. If nothing is to be done on your side to remove this material from the internet, actions will be taken to make sure this video is removed and negative repercussions may follow.  It is quite evident that you were harassing this man, and there is no evidence of a video/photo release statement. If this video is not taken down in a timely manner, please be aware that you will be contacted again quite soon. If you have any questions or concerns, please send them to my email account: StephaniePinta@gmail.com.‬

[...]

Please allow us to be very clear. At Rebel Pundit we do not appreciate threats against our First Amendment rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution or our right to publish freely under section 4 of the  Illinois Constitution. Perhaps the “gentleman” in the interview should have thought a little bit harder about his own personal choice to show up at a public protest on public property with a large sign publicly voicing his opposition to the event.

So going to a public place with a derogatory sign while shouting profanities isn’t harassment but politely asking a guy why he’s in public with a derogatory sign while shouting profanities is? Photo release statement? No. The man on the tape was engaging in public protest and by the very nature of such an act was asking for media coverage. No statement is needed, just like no statement was needed for the media when they covered the Madison protests, et al.  Nice try, but no dice.

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Lately CNN’s ratings have been in the ditch – often in last place against its cable news rivals. But the ratings shot up when CNN used on-the-scene citizen reporters during the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, according to The New York Times.

CNN’s ratings jumped more than 400 percent and brought the cable news channel 2.2 million viewers on the first day of the disaster – beating Fox News for the first time in memory by a couple of hundred thousand viewers and trouncing MSNBC’s meager 558,000 viewers. CNN even came close to beating Fox News in the primetime slot (8-11 p.m.).

What made the difference? The visible difference was that CNN used a substantial number of citizen reports uploaded through its iReport portal.

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Apparently in bongo/protest/chanty-speak, reporting on actual things occurring in Madison, putting it online for people to watch protesters say and do ridiculous things with their own mouths, is “union lies!” We told you last week how Wisconsin protestors descended on a reporter, calling him names and using that dreaded “vitriolic rhetoric.”

This time Ann Althouse is the target, and I do mean “target.” She and her husband received some Lil’ Loughner-type threats, which she posted online:

Op:countertroll Vs Althouse and Meade

This is ripe for a game of “Wisconsin Union Threat or Charlie Sheen?” Language ahead!

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Just like in Watergate, where the initial players tried to write-off the scandal as a “third-rate break-in,” the bigger story lies in the power wielded by executives trying desperately to cover their tracks and pretend they didn’t do something extraordinarily odious.  We are witnessing a cover-up.  An effort designed to disguise the fact that National Public Radio was very seriously intending to receive an anonymous donation from a front group dedicated to spreading Sharia around the world and was associated with a known terrorist organization.

As the old Washington cliché goes, it’s not the original crime that gets you in trouble, it’s the cover-up.  And so it goes for NPR’s response to Project Veritas’ blockbuster investigative report that has already resulted in the ouster of the two top executives at the publicly-funded broadcast network.

NPR’s immediate response, as reported by their own reporter, David Folkenflik was:

The fraudulent organization represented in this video repeatedly pressed us to accept a $5 million check, with no strings attached, which we repeatedly refused to accept.

This bit of damage control was repeated in just about every piece of main stream coverage on the scandal.  Big Journalism pointed out on the day the scandal broke, that NPR’s subsequent statements insisting that they suspected something fishy with the group as they continued their vetting process (even as recently as last week) proves that their initial insistence that they had repeatedly refused the donation offered by a Muslim Brotherhood front group was patently false and proved that the pubic was not getting the full truth about NPR’s behavior.  Why did NPR continue to vet a group that they repeatedly refused a donation from? (more…)

The way the mob in Madison surrounds the MacIver Institute’s citizen journalist with the with ravenous eyes is creepy. They call him a  ”teabagger” and a “narc” while saying that he will probably make them out to not look peaceful.

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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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Yesterday, we revealed yesterday’s examination of Rep. Andre Carson’s contemporaneous account that he gave reporters versus actual video footage of the events at the Cannon Office Building. The video showing the congressmen walking down the steps unencumbered by the hostile, racist mob that we had been told was there proved that Rep. Carson’s description was exaggerated at best, fabricated at worst.

We asked our readers for any other footage and testimonials they might have from that day in Washington DC. In the true spirit of citizen journalists holding our government accountable, we received many tips. The following compilation further exposes the myth that Rep. Carson passed on to the eager media that day.

The leftist elements of the mainstream media (MSM) could be content just to gloat because they got away with the biggest coup in political history.  Instead, they are launching a full frontal assault on conservatism.  The left must be very afraid.

The accusations are flying.  Virtually every MSM news outlet is running commentary of alleged “racial slurs” and “violent outbursts.”   Shouldn’t they be running video of the actual incidents, instead (if they actually happened)?

Congressman Emanuel Cleaver (D, Mo.) made accusations and the media took the allegation as gospel despite the absence of any corroborating evidence.  The  MSM reported the allegation as news. Interesting, there was almost no national MSM coverage of an innocent black man who was attacked, beaten, and stomped on tape by SEIU protesters in St. Louis.

When Representative Cleaver found media attention for his yet unfounded accusations, others jumped in with more accusations.   They all got press, too.  They all accused conservative groups like the Tea Party of the threats, violent actions, and vicious activities. (more…)

A post entitled “Can Alinsky’s Tactics Work on the Right?  Should They?” by Christian Hartsock in Big Journalism, along with local battles between ultra- conservatives and other conservatives over using Alinsky’s tactics to further the cause, brings to light that the matter of “factioning” (breaking apart into rival groups) has become a concern.

As an engaged Republican on the inside of politics for more than a decade now, I have seen pro-life activists faction and thus kill good bills for the sake of credit.  I have seen primary candidates lie about other candidates in order to win races they should not have won.  I have seen one person’s opinion smack down another conservative’s attempt to do right over side issues irrelevant to the goal.  This never produces real winners, and forces duplication of efforts for conservatives fighting the good fight.

The good news is that if conservatives are clashing, that means that the natural law of division is engaging, because there are enough conservatives to fight over how to defeat the left.  That is a convenience reserved only for groups that are strong, and winning. (more…)