The Huffington Post is being accused of purposefully misquoting Steven Crowder, the victim of violence at the hands of union thugs during protests over Michigan’s right-to-work legislation, and blaming Crowder for provoking the attacks.
In a December 11th piece by Dave Jamieson, Crowder is misquoted at least once. Worse, instead of having Crowder explain himself, his actions are “explained” by a union tough that was on the scene.
The whole story was “reported” from the union perspective and painted Crowder as a “provocateur” who’s main goal was “to get punched.”
The whole of the story was originally presented from the perspective of union member Ken Spitzley, a state agriculture department employee, who claimed he witnessed Crowder’s actions that day. According to Spitzley, Crowder was only there to “provoke” the union thugs.
“There was no question he was there just to start a fight, to start some kind of trouble,” Jamieson reports.
Jamieson then misleadingly quotes Crowder as saying, “I definitely provoked them… I was asking them basic questions.”
Seems like an admission, no? Actually, it isn’t. Crowder was sarcastically referring to how ridiculous a notion it was that simply asking protesters questions was provocative enough to elicit the violent response he received.
Then Jamieson gets to a particular confrontation between Crowder and one of the union thugs:
Sptizley offered one specific anecdote that Crowder disputed. According to Spitzley, Crowder had an exchange with two pro-union men wearing blue jeans, hard hats and Carhartt clothing. One of the men accused Crowder of working for Amway, the family company of Michigan businessman Dick DeVos. Crowder joked that he sells soap.
“He said, ‘I sell soap. I should sell you some,'” Spitzley said, quoting Crowder.
Crowder claims that Jamieson re-arranged his quote to make it appear to say something far different than he actually said.
In an email, Crowder told Breitbart:
No I didn’t say that!! I told him exactly: “What?! I never said that.” They accused me of being paid by the Devos’ and that I worked for Amway. I brushed it off saying something to the effect of “Yeah, yeah I sell soap for a living, whatever.”
Again, it should be pointed out that one of the things that Crowder does for a living is stand-up comedy. This is also something that Jamieson does not explain to his readers so that they can come to understand his sarcastic explanation of the incident.
Jamieson claims that the video Crowder posted showing the attack was “edited,” but doesn’t mention that there are at least a half dozen other videos clearly showing that it was the union members that were the threatening party that day.
After Jamieson posted the story, Crowder contacted him demanding that changes be made to the article to better reflect the truth. Jamieson did make some alterations to the story, but he made no effort to clarify Crowder’s position or meaning and stuck to the original theme of the story, blaming Crowder for “provoking” the union thugs.