There is a video floating around the internet lately that you may have seen where a Congressman “attacks” a student reporter and demands to know “Who Are you?”. In case you haven’t seen it, here’s a link.
This is not the first of these sorts of videos to go around. Nor will it likely be the last in this world of citizen Journalists and bloggers. I’m not here today to discuss this video or who is right or wrong in the video, what I am here to discuss is this video in the sense of it’s “type”.
Many people will agree that the mainstream news on the cable channels tends to be somewhat mediocre, full of pointless paranoia and alarmism with little actual digging into the details of even the most important stories. One Sided tends to be the term applied. Bloggers take these stories and try to dig a bit deeper sometimes, or at the very least, they will question some aspect of what is being reported to possibly suggest an alternative viewpoint. This is great except when the blogger or Independent news source starts pushing the same sort of paranoia and anger fueled type of news that they show contempt towards cable news outlets for.
Like the video above. Taken at face value, assuming honesty on the part of these “students” the Congressman is clearly a bully and a jerk. However there are too many unknown facts at work for a true judgment to be made. For example, why is it so terrible that these students can’t let the guy know what they are really doing? They claim “Students working on a project”.
What kind of project?
What school?
The students don’t provide any of this information. The Congressman is not required to respond to any of their questions either. These are people who receive death threats and get harassed by nut jobs pretty regularly, what makes these students any different if they can’t or are unwilling to back up their story. Even if they said “Hi, we’re students working on a Journalism project for the University of Whatever”, that cordial greeting will go a lot farther in getting a response than the ambush style of “We’re students, why do you need to know more, PS answer our question, answer our question.”
Which brings up the other questionable part of the video. This clip is almost totally out of context. For all we know these students have been harassing this poor senator as he walked down the street for an hour. It’s one thing to keep a straight face and look the other way but there’s a point when people just break from harassment. This may have been the main goal all along even.
1) Find some Congressperson
2) Harass him endlessly with vague questions he won’t want to answer
3) Wait for him to explode at you and yell at you (or worse)
4) Post it online for kicks and hits!
Yet people circulate these sorts of videos constantly, out of context with no back story. I’m not saying that it’s not possible it’s what it seems to be, nor am I supporting the manhandling of this student, I’m just suggesting that even if a story of video comes from some independent “non biased” source it should still be questioned.
