Harvard Obama clip: Breitbart's Big Government team vs. Buzzfeed

collegepolitico | 5:45 PM on March 07, 2012

This afternoon Ben Smith speculated on twitter that his site, Buzzfeed, had obtained a video that the late Andrew Breitbart had said he planned to release before the 2012 election which contained information damaging to President Obama. After hearing about the release Breitbart’s Big Government wrote an article criticizing Buzzfeed’s video as edited. Big Government claimed that the tape was edited, either by the Buzzfeed’s source or Buzzfeed themselves, to protect President Obama.

https://twitter.com/#!/ezradulis/status/177468265398927361

Ben Smith was not happy with this criticism and took to twitter to voice his anger.

https://twitter.com/#!/BuzzFeedBen/status/177471146378272768

https://twitter.com/#!/BuzzFeedBen/status/177471669676412928

https://twitter.com/#!/BuzzFeedBen/status/177471866880012288

However, many conservatives took issue with Ben Smith’s defense of his site’s latest video including everything their source had given them. The problem with Smith’s defense, according to his critics, is that he did not apply it to Andrew Breitbart’s release of a source’s video on Shirley Sherrod. In fact, Smith specifically attacked Breitbart for not appearing to seek the full video as, he hoped, “most reporters would have”. He even said the publishing of the video created a “growing credibility problem” for the Breitbart sites.

https://twitter.com/#!/RBPundit/status/177501468738322432

https://twitter.com/#!/jtLOL/status/177499482982854656

https://twitter.com/#!/JamesOKeefeIII/status/177498569467637760

Ben Smith apparently did not understand the criticism however and responded to conservative videographer James O’Keefe: