You may have noticed that #UnverifyAndyNgo is trending today on Twitter. There are myriad reasons, of course, why people are not particularly fond of Andy Ngo. For one, he's been known for some time now to share deceptively edited videos in hopes of portraying antifa as "scary," leading to some very stupid rumors about "cement milkshakes." He shared and helped shape a Quillette article that put the lives of several journalists in danger by claiming they were in cahoots with antifa because they report on antifa while also following antifa accounts on Twitter. (Indeed, the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen developed a "kill list" of journalists mentioned in the article and several were subsequently the recipients of death threats.) And in early July, the Daily Beast reported that he published several articles by non-existent people invented by a Middle Eastern propaganda campaign on his site, The Post Millennial, and then subsequently took them down without acknowledging it had ever happened.
Oh! And for months, he has been the subject of criticism for taking and repurposing footage by others on Twitter rather than producing his own. Several people on Twitter have even speculated that he uses sock puppet accounts to do this more efficiently — likely so that users cannot change their user names to things that might embarrass him.
While the way Ngo often takes videos from others (sharing the tweet with "/video/1" added to the end of the url allows him to retweet the video but not the original tweet the video was attached to) isn't explicitly like stealing and claiming credit for the video -- because it still includes a credit to the person who originally posted it -- it's a bit of an ethical gray area on Twitter. It means you get all the retweets rather than the person who uploaded it, and if it's their original video, that's just kind of a crappy thing to do.
Which brings us to Laura Ingraham and "@Brittany3l."
In late July, documentarian Rod Webber took a video of some very adorable toddlers at the Portland with "Fuck The Police" signs.
These kids say, “fuck the police.” #PortlandProtests #fuckthepolice https://t.co/MSMf5SqKcG— Rod Webber (@Rod Webber) 1595474130.0
Of course, while we find that darling, it would also enrage the crap out of Fox News viewers. And that is very likely why Webber was soon contacted by Mike McDonald, a producer from "The Ingraham Angle," about using his footage on air.
Webber's response was a very fair and balanced "Fuck Fox News."
Not long after that, the video was reuploaded to Twitter by one @Brittany3l — a user with around 2200 followers who, for some reason we could not possibly speculate, seems to dedicate most of her timeline to praising and retweeting Andy Ngo — with Webber's watermark removed.
It was subsequently, like so many other videos, shared by Ngo — and then retweeted tens of thousands of times by his followers, including Donald Trump Jr. and Laura Ingraham.
Webber then filed a DMCA takedown notice on Twitter against Ngo.
.@MrAndyNgo, as a result of your unscrupulous tactics, and outright theft of my video from the #PortlandProtests, I… https://t.co/2p9muP0B2D— Rod Webber (@Rod Webber) 1595626904.0
Not long after that, "The Ingraham Angle" aired the footage — the exact same footage Webber told them they could not use — on air, credited to none other than "@Brittany3l." Webber's voice can be heard throughout the whole thing.
Rutgers To De-Emphasize Basic Grammar To Please BLM, Toddler Says "F*** The Police" At Protestwww.youtube.com
It will shock you that Andy Ngo is in fact a frequent guest on "The Ingraham Angle." There are many coincidences here!
Wonkette reached out to Webber, who provided the following statement:
I'm not surprised that Andy Ngo turned out to be a plagiarist. I'm not surprised that Fox News is cringe, and engages in intentionally fraudulent activity. That said— I'm also really not too worried about someone using one of my video's within the parameters of fair use. However, to intentionally misattribute a video is not fair use. What we have here is a mega-"news" corporation, (Fox), getting caught red-handed engaging in fraud, false representation and negligent representation.
They have done it knowingly, and willingly. Between Fox and Andy Ngo, they have caused the video to be shared with a misattribution to hundreds of thousands. The video has received 3.4 million views off of Andy alone— and it has been shared by Senators, Governors, and the dim-wit President's son.
I am no stranger to lawsuits. A Federal judge has allowed my case against the Trump Campaign, (and other Trump affiliates), to proceed on several counts— assault, battery, fraud, false imprisonment, and more)— so I am currently reaching out to attorneys to consider legal action regarding Fox/ Ngo. The Trump case is NH District court case # 1:18-cv-00931-LM. We soon move into discovery.
Given that Webber's voiceover is so clear in the clip, it would be quite difficult for the producers to not be aware that this was the exact same clip they had just been told they could not use. And that's a crappy thing to do. Creators are all hustling out here, and to take someone's work without permission, credit or payment is not just unethical, it's cruel. It's hard enough to do that kind of work without skeezy right-wing media personalities going out and stealing it.
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