A foreign correspondent for The Blaze visiting Iraq posted a photo of himself firing a sniper rifle, apparently at Islamic State extremists. He tweeted that he fired six shots at the enemy.
Now he’s facing incoming.
But they aren’t bullets. Fellow journalists are slamming the correspondent, Jason Buttrill, for picking up a gun. They say journalists are not supposed to be combatants.
The criticism has started a Twitter flame war, with supporters saying Buttrill did nothing wrong. But apparently the controversy was a bit much for the parent company of The Blaze, which has reportedly pulled Buttrill back home.
Buttrill describes himself on his Twitter account as a former intelligence analyst for the Pentagon who is now a geopolitical analyst and chief researcher for The Blaze, the news network started by conservative talk radio personality Glenn Beck.
A story on the news portal lauds Buttrill for “documenting the fight to take back Iraq street by street.”
“If they can break Mosul, I mean, ISIS is pretty much done…in Iraq. They’re going to be pushed all the way back up into Syria. They’re not really going to have a foothold in Iraq at all,” Buttrill told a show carried on The Blaze.