Conservatives looking to delegitimize the Occupy Wall Street protests have a new tactic – targeting journalists.
The criticisms are a kind of conservative twofer, allowing them to hit old targets like NPR and the New York Times by raising questions about their objectivity, while at the same time undermining the grassroots claims of the new protest movement by suggesting it has professional help – or at least professional cheerleaders.
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So far both the Times and NPR have had to distance themselves from freelancers accused of getting too close to the protests, while MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan has come under scrutiny for leaked emails purportedly showing that he had helped the protesters shape their message.
Behind much of the criticism has been Andrew Breitbart, the conservative media provocateur whose sites have published both the leaked emails and Monday’s video of a New York Times freelancer speaking about the protests on a panel. But his critiques have been amplified by conservative talkers such as Rush Limbaugh, who last week held up the leaked emails of Ratigan and Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi as evidence that Occupy Wall Street was
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