I think of myself as a primary source documentarian
And what I mean by that is that I try to collect raw footage of situations
Usually it's political activism is the thing that I've ended up focusing on the most over the last decade
And the idea is to capture raw documentary footage of those situations, including
live streams. And the purpose of it, putting it out there, is having people be able to see exactly
what happened. But the distinction between just objectively covering something like that and thinking
of what my work is as primary source documentary is that the purpose of it is for
it to take another step that is beyond what I'm controlling, which is licensing to
other places. So you documentary films. Yeah. You license to documentary filmmakers who use your footage in their projects for
cable news, places like Fox, CNN. Can you explain, you had an experience, you covered January 6th and I want to talk
about what that was like from your position. And CNN use some of your January 6 footage
Can you use that example to kind of talk about how like you create a primary document
that a news source comes in and they're going to recontextualize it or, you know, and
it could be decontextualize it or recontextualize it, miscontextualize it. But sure
What was going on? What did you shoot at January 6th? And then how did CNN use it
And how do you feel about that? Right. So I have a variety of stuff. I was at January 6 all day and kind of got a variety of angles
But one of the most kind of notable moments that I captured was the entering of the
Oath Keepers, several members of that kind of militia group into the East Door
So an example of how my work is used is that so CNN licensed that footage and they
used it to illustrate an interview with a lawyer representing some of the Oath Keepers
So oftentimes like the idea of like, well, I have it in context
It's not necessarily a criticism of the people who are licensing it from me. I don't have any particular grievance with the way that they use that
But I do think that it's important that people who are watching the news and are
actually interested in being educated about it should be able to see what things look
like in context. So this is like, I mean, your primary source, it's like a hyperlink in a story where
somebody is quoting a court decision and they have three or four lines. You can click on that and go and see, is that a proper use of that quote
Right, exactly. And so I've had occasions where I've documented events and I can see
that the way that the news covers them, whether they use my footage or not, is sort of
inaccurate or misleading. And even when something is accurate, it's still removed and taken into a new
format. Right. It's a lawyer and a journalist discussing a legal case. And I filmed something pertinent to that case for the audience who actually wants to
see how it happened. You want to be able to have that availability of video. And news outlets don't, for the most part, actually make that public
Right. If CNN had been there filming that themselves, they would only use what they
need to make that point. But it's not like they would say, here's our library of raw footage for you to check out if you want to learn more
Is this, you know, you're part of a lineage now. I would date it back at least to the Rodney King beating, the video of that, which
was taken by a regular guy, a citizen who was trying out a video camera
And he happened to look across the way and, you know, he saw the LAPD beating the shit
out of a guy who turned out to be Rodney King. And that, you know, became a kind of touch, a flashpoint, because it was kind of like a
surveillance camera being turned on power on law enforcement in this case
But since then, the ubiquity of cameras and the ability of different people in
different contexts filming things, it really kind of changes things. This is also true of George Floyd, right
That absent the video of George Floyd, there probably is not the, you know, that
moment in 2020, even with COVID and everything. How powerful is this shift, you know, that you're part of
Yeah, I mean, I think so. Firstly, I do film the police a lot at these political activism type events
I've tended to find that a variable in whether something turns into a Charlottesville
like situation or what I see more often is, you know, opposing sides show up and police
actually separate them and then it doesn't enter the news because it didn't turn into a
fight. Right. So I've documented police tactics. And I think that that's really important for people to see when things go bad
Why did they go bad when things go right? Why did they go right? As it relates to policing beyond activism, I actually gave a speech at a conservative
conference in 2019 where I argued to a room full of people who really like cops
basically that you should exercise your First Amendment right to film the police. Right. And there was a question I got during the Q&A where there was a person who
expressed the concern. Well, what happens if you basically film a police officer doing something that looks bad
but it's out of context, right, that you see a cop hitting somebody, but you don't know what
happened right before it. And the solution I had to that is like, the problem is not that you filmed that moment
The problem is that you missed whatever came first. And so there's all kinds of arguments that people can make about surveillance of the
citizenry. But I strongly believe in surveilling the state as citizens to the extent
possible. And that can mean body cams. Right. That kind of thing I do think of as a positive development
But my actual observation has been that police departments often have the discretion to
release whatever stuff they kind of want. Sometimes it's forced out by court cases and whatever
But I have a friend who's a journalist who got shot with a rubber bullet in D.C
and when they went to they said, I want the body cam footage of me getting shot with a
rubber bullet. The police said, sure, that'll cost thirty thousand dollars. Not exaggerating
I've seen this email the way they described it as well. We would have to go through every single body cam and then we'd have to redact every
single face that isn't yours. As we look for it, we estimate it'll take this number of man hours
It'll cost you thirty thousand dollars to get that. And so as much as we might want to rely on the state self-reporting, I do think it's
really important that we have citizen journalists out there out there filming what's happening
And I think that's what we're doing. And I think that's what we're doing. And I think that's what we're doing. And I think that's what we're doing
And I think that's what we're doing. And I think that's what we're doing