Opinion: Don’t let ideologues take lecture capture hostage

Breitbart said in April that he would 'go after' teachers and union members.

We all know there are ideologues out there willing to twist words, images, and video to suit whatever ugly purpose they promote. And a professor’s recorded lecture, manipulatively edited, can have a greater impact than printed words, simply because it can appear more real.

Lecture capture is worthy enough that we don’t want it taken hostage by anyone hoping to use the technology to wage political battles.

I don’t want to see it taken hostage by ideologues like Andrew Breitbart, proprietor of the conservative website BigGovernment.com, who recently improperly edited some web video to make it appear that a University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) lecturer was advocating violence as a labor union tactic.…Read More

Recorded lectures take on new risk as blogger ‘goes after teachers’

Breitbart has been accused of splicing web video before the University of Missouri incident.

Controversial blogger Andrew Breitbart might make college professors squeamish about recording their lectures.

Web video purporting to show a University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) lecturer advocating violence as a labor union tactic was deemed “highly distorted” by campus officials who reviewed the recording, which was posted last month by Breitbart, a conservative blogger with a track record of misleading, highly publicized videos.

Edited video of UMKC labor studies lecturers Don Giljum and Judy Ancel were posted on Breitbart’s website, Big Government, in late April, and the site’s writers followed up with several more posts about the educators’ supposed lessons of how violence can be a useful strategy for union organizers.…Read More