POLITICIANS BEWARE: CITIZEN JOURNALIST
WEB SITE SEEKING HARD-HITTING VIDEO OF HILL FIGURES,
MAINSTREAM MEDIA JOURNALISTS
AmbushTV.us “Wanted” Poster Puts Bounty
on Heads of Congress’ Immigration Hypocrites, Impeachment
Flip-Floppers, Corporate Jet Users, Cigarette Smokers …and
“Suck-Up” Journalists
AUSTIN, TEXAS and WASHINGTON, D.C., April 19, 2006 --
Politicians and liars should consider themselves warned: A
new Web site (
http://www.AmbushTV.us)
is literally taking aim at the biggest hypocrites on Capitol
Hill and in the mainstream media. Providing citizen
journalists with a powerful Web-based platform on which to
post videos they get after tracking down and interviewing
elected officials, AmbushTV represents the most aggressive
effort yet undertaken to provide citizens with cutting-edge
tools to hold Congress and other national officials
accountable to the people.
To get the ball rolling, AmbushTV is setting a “bounty” in
the form of an old West-style “Wanted” poster that features
five categories of offenses:
* Immigration Hypocrites video of members of Congress who
“talk tough on immigrants but hire an illegal immigrant at
home for child care, yard care or other work”;
* Impeachment Flip Floppers - “members of Congress voted for
Articles of Impeachment against Bill Clinton in 1998 for
lying about sex, but defend President Bush today for one or
more of the following offenses: authorizing the leak of
classified information about an undercover CIA agent,
warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens, and lying about
the grounds for the war in Iraq”;
* Mile-High Corporate Club - “U.S. House and Senate members
who use private corporate jets for traveling to campaign
events and other purposes … You can do the homework yourself
to check out the ownership of any privately registered
aircraft that you see a politician boarding” by using a
database site provided by AmbushTV;
* Suck-Up Journalists - “if you work in a news organization
-- or if you view raw satellite feed -- and you can capture
off-air video or audio of a journalist sucking up to a
politician, we want it!”; and
* Hill Hackers - “footage of (sneak smoker and House
Majority leader) John Boehner or any other ‘Hill hacker’
that you can get on camera as he or she takes a drag on a
coffin nail.”
Explaining the need for the new Web site, AmbushTV Founder
Yehudi Mercado, who also is co-founder of Web design firm
Horseback Salad, said: “Forget the media. This is all
about wedia people like you and me taking control to draw
the attention of elected officials and the public to the
real priorities of this nation’s people. AmbushTV was
founded by people like you who are committed to fostering
representative democracy, justice, fairness and freedom.
We are just regular folks. We aren’t corporations and we
aren’t fronting for special interests. We don’t even all
belong to the same political party.”
Mercado said: “We call it AmbushTV because like you we
are fed up with canned, rehearsed, choreographed, phony news
that only spits out what the politicians and special
interests want you to hear. We want know what politicians
have to say when Americans start holding their feet to the
fire and demanding real answers to the real questions. So,
forget about ‘playing by the rules’ when it comes to the
news. If Americans are going to take back the flow of
information in politics, they need to shake things up. Is
everyone going to like that and play along? Of course
not. Everyone in the establishment wants things cozy and
by the numbers. Too bad for them. From now on, any time an
elected official is out in public in connection with their
role as an elected official, we consider them fair game for
questions from their constituents unscripted and on
camera.”
The mission of AmbushTV is to let citizen journalists use
video, animations and other tools transmitted on the
Internet to hold public officials accountable and examine
any political topic. It works like this:
* AmbushTV collects, catalogues and posts cutting-edge and
controversial “ambush interviews” and other hard-hitting
political content submitted to us by “real people.”
* AmbushTV stimulates further action by viewers: Every clip
features on-line pops up in its own frame, with space for
the submitter to add links to relevant information and tools
to take action.
* AmbushTV is fun & entertaining: Humor is one of the most
effective ways of getting people to think about things.
Every clip has a Bullshit Meter, which measures votes of
confidence viewers have in the material or interview
subject.
* AmbushTV does around-the-clock media outreach on behalf of
the site’s content. We continually scan our content for the
funniest, most outrageous, most revealing or otherwise
newsworthy clips. The most newsworthy items are promoted
immediately the mainstream media, and weekly updates to
hundreds of media contacts keep them informed of the latest
great stuff on the site.
How can you get involved? Why not start with an ambush
interview? Grab a video camera and learn how to use it
effectively. Find out when your ‘subject’ will be at a
public function where you can meet them, and do an
unscheduled, unannounced, on camera interview and you’ve
got yourself a bona fide AmbushTV interview.
Or, use your camera to shed light on any political issue.
Then, upload the digital file to the AmbushTV site, tell us
who you are, who you have on tape, on what topic and when
the footage was created and we’ll post it on the Web
site. Once your footage is up, there are several ways
people can find out about it. You will get a customized URL
link that you can send around to your list and direct them
back to the footage itself.
HorseBack Salad Entertainment (
http://www.horsebacksalad.com)
was founded in 2001. We decided that we would strive to
make any project we do both different and cool. From
interactive movie theaters to city-wide road rallies to an
award-winning animated DVD series, we have redefined what a
traditional design house is capable of. Called the "Best
Little Toon House in Austin" by Animation Magazine,
Horseback Salad has done work for MTV, ABC, Scholastic and
The Lance Armstrong Foundation.
