What, you think we wouldn’t notice?
Yesterday, I wrote about how Fox “News” contributor Steven Crowder used Andrew Breitbart-style editing of video from Michigan’s anti-Right to Work for Less rally on Tuesday to paint union members the worst way possible.
The story has been picked up nationally and, last night, was quoted heavily in a post at the New York Times news blog The Lede:
On Wednesday, however, questions were raised about the way in which Mr. Crowder had edited his video. After speaking with a witness to the events, the liberal blogger Chris Savage argued on his site Eclectablog that the video edit was misleading. {…}As Mr. Savage noted, raw video of the scuffle over the tent shot by another camera showed that the man who punched Mr. Crowder was engaged in an angry discussion with a defender of the tent when the comedian stepped in between them. Within seconds the fight broke out.
In response to questions, including from his supporters, about the way he had edited the video, Mr. Crowder was by turns philosophical and prickly, but pointed out that more of the footage he used to make the clip was broadcast during his appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program on Tuesday night. {…}
Unfortunately for Mr. Crowder, a look at the video broadcast on the Sean Hannity show appears to show quite clearly that he left out an important section of the footage when he put together his edit. A section of the Fox News broadcast preserved by the Web site Mediaite shows that Mr. Hannity’s producers at Fox News started the clip five seconds earlier than Mr. Crowder did. What the extra footage reveals is the man who punched Mr. Crowder being knocked to the ground seconds before and then getting up and taking a swing at the comedian.
Here’s the video from Mediaite. As The Lede’s Robert Mackey describes, in the first few seconds, you can see that the union member that took a swing at Crowder had already been knocked to the ground and was getting up before he went after Crowder:
There’s also this bit that just shows Crowder’s utter lack of veracity:
There is one more anomaly in Mr. Crowder’s edit of the footage shot by his associates. The still frame he used for the clip’s title image on YouTube, which offers a much clearer image of the man punching him, was obviously shot by a second camera, from an entirely different angle than the rest of the footage he presented of the man hitting him.
I said something in a piece yesterday that I’d like to repeat here:
Let’s not kid ourselves about what “Tentgate” and “Hot Doggate” are all about: distracting the country from noticing that corporatist ideologues have turned the birthplace of American organized labor into a Right to Work for Less state. It’s a smokescreen, chaff to make sure the conversation is not about screwing union members and is, instead, about the AFP losing a couple of tents.
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