Andrew Kaczynski

Andrew Kaczynski (March 17, 1989[1] is an American journalist and a political reporter for CNN.[2] He became well known in 2011 by posting old video clips of politicians, often of them making statements contrary to their current political positions, to YouTube.[3] He was described as "the [2012] Republican primaries' most influential amateur opposition researcher".[4] He was hired by BuzzFeed in December 2011.[5] He attended college at Ohio University, but got involved with political reporting and left school without a degree. As of 2012, he was enrolled at St. Johns University to study early American history and did online courses to meet his degree requirement.[6]

At 19, Kaczynski had a bout of pancreatitis leading him to eschew smoking and alcohol.[7]

Slate political reporter Dave Weigel called him "the Oppenheimer of archival video research."[8]

Kaczynski got his start by emailing reporters' tip boxes with clips he found of politicians contradicting themselves.[9][10] In 2012, Kaczynski uncovered numerous clips of Mitt Romney supporting an individual mandate, contradicting his then-current campaign position. He also uncovered a clip of Barack Obama protesting at Harvard while at law school over a lack of faculty diversity.

Time named Kaczynski's Twitter feed one of "The 140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2013", one of ten in the Politics category.[11] He has appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, NPR, PBS, and C-SPAN.[12] He was described as a moderate Republican in a New York Magazine profile. It was later revealed Kaczynski was misquoted and called himself "a political moderate."[3][13] Kaczynski did not graduate from college.[14] He has worked as an intern for the Republican National Committee[15] and was an intern in 2011 in the office of Congressman Bob Turner.[4] In 2013 he was listed on the Daily Beast website's "Beast Best" awards for his Twitter Feed.[16] In 2014, New York Magazine named him the 13th most influential Tweeter in New York City.[17]

In November 2013, Kaczynski reported that Kentucky Senator Rand Paul had plagiarized sections of s speech he gave in June 2013 on immigration from the Wikipedia article of the movie Stand and Deliver. Kaczynski subsequently reported Paul's 2012 book Government Bullies also contained passages that were plagiarized from articles from the right wing think tank Heritage Foundation and from the libertarian Cato Institute.[18] Further reports by Kaczynski revealed another four instances of plagiarism from an article by Case Western Reserve University professor Jonathan H. Adler and Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Timothy Sandefur. Another section of the book was discovered to be plagiarized from an article written in Forbes Magazine.

In 2014, Kaczynski continued with a series of articles chronicling politicians' plagiarism. Kaczynski found more than a dozen examples of politicians running for office in 2014 copying their plans and issues pages verbatim from other candidates.[19]

Following the Boston Marathon bombings of 2013, he played a role in accidentally spreading misinformation about the identities of the suspected bombers when he retweeted false reports made by Reddit user Greg Hughes about a particular person who was innocent of the crime.[20][21]

In 2015, Politico reported [22] Kaczynski was leading internal opposition research at BuzzFeed looking to dig up dirt on politicians. NPR reported[23] Kaczynski's team dug up clips of Donald Trump saying he supported – despite statements to the contrary – the Iraq War, a clip of Hillary Clinton referring to some children as "super predators", a video of Ben Carson saying he believed the pyramids were used to store grain and a video of Bernie Sanders proclaiming his support for Fidel Castro and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

Kaczynski subsequently found clips of Donald Trump supporting the 2011 American intervention in Libya,[24] the toppling of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak,[25] and pushing for U.S. action to protect Iranian protesters.[26]

Clips Kaczynski found of Donald Trump on the Howard Stern Show[27] were used in both Democratic[28] and Republican[29] attack ads against Trump and as the basis of a question in the first general election Presidential debate of 2016.

During the campaign for US President in 2016, Kaczynski brought to attention a statement by the chairman of the American Nazi Party that he supports Republican candidate Donald Trump on the grounds that "if Trump does win ... it's going to be a real opportunity for people like white nationalists."[30]

On October 3, 2016 Kaczynski announced he was leaving BuzzFeed and joining CNN.[31] Politico named Kaczynski one of the breakout stars of the 2016 election.[32]

References

  1. ↑ "Politinerds 39 - Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski". Vigilant Liberty Radio. 2015-11-13. Retrieved 2015-11-14.
  2. ↑ "Andrew Kaczynski, reporter for BuzzFeed". BuzzFeed. Retrieved 5 April 2013.
  3. 1 2 Zengerle, Jason (Dec 11, 2011). "Playing with Mud". New York Magazine. Retrieved 5 April 2013.
  4. 1 2 Sarlin, Benjy (Dec 13, 2011). "Meet The 22-Year-Old Who's Driving Romney Crazy". Talking Points Memo. Retrieved 5 April 2013.
  5. ↑ Sonderman, Jeff (March 20, 2012). "How BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski mines the Internet for video gold". Poynter. Retrieved 5 April 2013.
  6. ↑ "Q&A with Andrew Kaczynski". C-SPAN. Retrieved 12 June 2016.
  7. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/style/andrew-kaczynski-buzzfeed-politics-cnn.html
  8. ↑ http://observer.com/2011/12/buzzfeed-hires-andrew-kaczynski-oppenheimer-of-political-videos/
  9. ↑ http://archive.is/mgaR1
  10. ↑ http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/romney_buzzfeed_and_that_hidde.php?page=all
  11. ↑ Sorensen, Adam (March 25, 2013). "The 140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2013". Time. Retrieved 2013-03-26.
  12. ↑ "St. John's Student Goes Viral". Retrieved 6 April 2013.
  13. ↑ https://twitter.com/buzzfeedandrew/status/367387739999985664
  14. ↑ https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/status/441302177928470529
  15. ↑ "Matt Lewis Show: Andrew Kaczynski". Retrieved 5 April 2013.
  16. ↑ http://beastbestawards.thedailybeast.com/
  17. ↑ http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/most-influential-new-yorkers-on-twitter-2014.html
  18. ↑ Trujillo, Mario (November 3, 2013). "Plagiarism charges against Paul pile up". The Hill.
  19. ↑ http://www.buzzfeed.com/katherinemiller/why-politicians-plagiarism-matters#1akf4m2
  20. ↑ "The Anatomy of a Misinformation Disaster". The Atlantic. Retrieved 25 July 2013.
  21. ↑ "Should Reddit Be Blamed for the Spreading of a Smear?" The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved 25 July 2013.
  22. ↑ http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/buzzfeed-builds-an-in-house-oppo-firm-207813
  23. ↑ http://www.npr.org/2016/03/15/470374457/the-buzzfeed-buzzsaw-why-campaigns-should-fear-these-4-twentysomethings
  24. ↑ https://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/trump-says-removing-gaddafi-was-mistake-but-pushed-for-libya?utm_term=.havLNw39G#.ujRVoR34X
  25. ↑ https://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/trump-in-2011-praised-hosni-mubaraks-ouster-as-a-good-thing?utm_term=.sbeElr2ZR#.yb41QjEAM
  26. ↑ https://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/trump-pushed-for-us-action-in-iran-libya-in-2011-fox-news-ap?utm_term=.rjmOgB6px#.sm2n3vWkG
  27. ↑ https://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/donald-trump-said-a-lot-of-gross-things-about-women-on-howar
  28. ↑ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-releases-ad-featuring-donald-trumps-degrading-comments-toward-women/
  29. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkSRJSUY0vs
  30. ↑ Holley, Peter (2016-08-07). "Top Nazi leader: Trump will be a 'real opportunity' for white nationalists". Washington Post. Retrieved 2016-08-08.
  31. ↑ Ember, Sydney (2016-10-03). "Four From BuzzFeed Politics Defect to CNN". New York Times. Retrieved 2016-10-03.
  32. ↑ http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/2016-election-media-stars-230813

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 12/1/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.