“Mark Hertsgaard, from Politico.”
Lying, or at the very least, misrepresenting your credentials – in this case, your place of employment – is not something you should do when speaking to elected officials, especially savvy ones who have a camera nearby.
This is not an ambush video, as the ambush is the interview itself. Instead, the video captured by a staffer shows the would-be “journalist” attempting to confront U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., about climate change. Regardless of your personal feelings on the subject of climate change, the video provides a real-time lesson in what NOT to do as a blogger, citizen journalist, reporter, or policy flak.
Hertsgaard tells Inhofe that he works as a reporter for Politico, the web-based political news site. Unfortunately for the earnest climate advocate, he is nothing of the sort:
Dan Berman, energy editor at Politico, told The Daily Caller that while Hertsgaard has written one opinion article for them, he was not and is not affiliated with Politico.
“Mr. Hertsgaard is not a POLITICO reporter or employee and we have asked him not to portray himself as one,” Berman wrote in an e-mail to The DC.
Whoops.
[...] For whatever reason, Inhofe’s video has attracted close to 20 times the views of the nearly identical depiction of the Capitol Hill encounter from Hertsgaard. [10:15 a.m. | Updated It doesn't help Hertsgaard's case that he told Inhofe he was "from Politico," apparently aiming to imply that his recent op-ed piece for the site was the same as having an affiliation with it. Politico's energy editor denied this.] [...]