Citizen journalism is working far better than perhaps anyone expected.  While traditional media has abandoned its responsibility and ethics to report unbiased news, citizen journalists have taken over the blogosphere and taken their cameras to the streets to find truth.

The former technique is one reason traditional newspapers are on their last legs. The latter technique is capturing truth so well that those being filmed resort to violence and intimidation in order to prevent it.

Why?

The answer goes back to a key phrase from an American cultural icon: Allen Funt.

Yes, I said, “Allen Funt.”

“Candid Camera” was not only a groundbreaking television show, it was a groundbreaking exercise in behavioral psychology.  Mr. Funt told audiences that they were enjoying, “people getting caught in the act of being themselves.” In that case, it was innocuous entertainment.

In the case of citizen journalists filming left-wing protests, it’s akin to war zone photography. The numerous incidences of protestors intimidating or assaulting citizen journalists have been posted here on the BIG websites all too often.

Why such hostility?

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It’s quite a stretch to call The Nation’s Max Blumenthal a journalist.

A real journalist is free to have an opinion and even to express it, but he doesn’t fabricate things to make his subject look bad. A real journalist tries to understand his subject and help his audience understand it instead of just subjecting it to abject ridicule.

Blumenthal, who leaped to conclusions in his since-corrected Salon.com article to slander Andrew Breitbart and James O’Keefe, is an ethically challenged agitprop creator and self-indulgent performance artist. His slurring of O’Keefe, who helped to expose the criminal inclinations of ACORN, as a racist is the same thing that ACORN does when it’s attacked. If you disagree, you’re a racist. Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!

This left-wing extremist, who wrote the book Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party, is so consumed by his hatred of the other side that he can’t think straight. His work is littered with factual errors, non sequiturs, selective use of evidence, glittering generalities, and hyperbole.

Blumenthal hates the Christian right, evangelicals, supporters of Israel, tea party activists, conservatives, and Republicans. This is not an exhaustive list. To him, conservatives are a “movement that’s filled with people who can’t handle individual freedom and the pressures of democracy.” Conservatives also are needy losers seeking redemption, according to Blumenthal: (more…)