James O’Keefe

James O’Keefe Reaches New Heights Of Stupidity – And Irrelevance

Posted by on February 9, 2012 at 2:56 am. 2 Comments :

James O'KeefeThe biggest joke in the modern era of pseudo-reality television has struck again. Crockumentary videographer James O’Keefe posted a new video purporting to reveal the potential for voter fraud in Minnesota.

I’m not going to waste much space refuting the inane premise of his video. That has already been done quite well by Brad Friedman at the Brad Blog and Tommy Christopher at Mediaite. Suffice to say that O’Keefe’s escapade proved absolutely nothing.

The short story is that he entered a few Minnesota county offices and misrepresented himself as a “third party” who was interested in helping other citizens to register who were unable to do so themselves. All that this amounted to was collecting an application for an absentee ballot, which anybody can do. However, filling out and submitting the application must be done by the actual voter and requires identification or a verified witness. And voters who register this way must present ID when voting for the first time at a polling place. But, O’Keefe never went that far, nor mentioned those facts. He simply implied that picking up the application form was evidence of potential for fraud.

The only crime that may have occurred here is the videotaping that O’Keefe did without the permission of the subjects. O’Keefe, a convicted criminal himself, is already under investigation for that crime in other states. He is also being sued for having slandered people through the dishonest and deceptive editing of his video stings.

The whole gambit, like most of O’Keefe’s charades, was a pointless exercise that proved nothing. His intent was to validate the manufactured right-wing hysteria over voter fraud that is being used to promote the passage of voter ID laws that make it more difficult for seniors, students, the poor, and the disabled to vote. It is part of a coordinated campaign to suppress the vote of predominantly Democratic constituencies. It should also be noted that none of these voter ID laws would have prevented what O’Keefe is attempting to do in his video.

So it isn’t news that O’Keefe is distributing yet another fraudulent video that serves no purpose other than maligning the innocent and alleging non-existent atrocities. What’s news is that even fewer people actually care about any of the fakery he is spewing. His first phony (and thoroughly debunked) videos about ACORN were featured on Andrew Breitbarts’s BigJournalism blog and Fox News. More recently O’Keefe was only able to interest Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller. But this new video is going nowhere fast. The usual right-wing propagandists are steering clear. Perhaps even they are finally too embarrassed to be associated with this hoaxter.

James O’Keefe Crew Commits Voter Fraud

Posted by on January 11, 2012 at 3:05 pm. 6 Comments :

James O'KeefeThe man responsible for producing intentionally deceitful videos and engaging in unlawful political stunts has once again crafted a sham that may land him in jail.

James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas posted its latest video that purports to have uncovered a voting scandal that will shock the nation. He sent his pretend reporters to New Hampshire to masquerade as recently deceased voters. They identified themselves as the dead citizens and took ballots from poll workers in an effort to prove that this sort of voter fraud was possible.

The problem with this caper is that it is illegal to procure ballots “that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent.” The Project Veritas gang committed this crime numerous times and then posted video evidence of their crime spree on YouTube.

However, the entire escapade was a waste of time that proves nothing. The fact that it is possible for someone to falsely identify themselves at a polling place is not evidence that voter fraud of that sort is occurring. In fact, it appears that the only known perpetrators of this crime are O’Keefe’s associates. So they contrived this whole scheme to prove that they could do something that nobody else is doing, and in the process they violated federal law.

O’Keefe himself did not accompany his accomplices to New Hampshire because he is still on probation for pretending to be a telephone repairman in order to gain access to a U.S. senator’s office. He must now reside with his parents in New Jersey and cannot leave the state without permission from the court.

O’Keefe is an incorrigible criminal who rejects any attempt to rehabilitate himself. In addition to his falsification of ACORN videos, and his misrepresentation at Sen. Landrieu’s office, O’Keefe has lied to Census Bureau personnel, attempted to lure a CNN reporter into a sexual tryst, deceitfully edited covert videos of a meeting with NPR executives, and posed as Russian drug dealers attempting unsuccessfully to get Medicaid benefits. And in none of these affairs did he ever prove anything other than what a scoundrel and liar hie is.

Time will tell if any of the perpetrators of this latest scam will be prosecuted. O’Keefe could be liable as the ring leader. He may also be in violation of his probation which requires that he not be involved in any illegal activities. But one thing is certain: No one seems to care what he does any more. His toxic reputation has exiled him to the farthest reaches of the wing-nut web. This video was picked up by the Daily Caller, the Internet home of Tucker Carlson who has been thrown off of more networks than any other pundit. O’Keefe is a journalistic leper whose presence stirs repulsion. Let’s hope the authorities do their job and put him away for a while.

James O’Keefe Drops Another Dud, Smears Medicaid

Posted by on July 19, 2011 at 12:54 am. 5 Comments :

James O'Keefe, BoratThe Borat of right-wing, pseudo-journalism, James O’Keefe, has released a new video that purports to expose rampant fraud within the Medicaid system.

As with any video from O’Keefe’s dishonest propaganda mill, the first reaction should be abundant skepticism. After all, this is the same guy who…

  • Deceptively edited videos of ACORN reps to make them look bad, even when in reality they had reported him to the police.
  • Tried and failed to lure CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau onto his love boat for some still unexplained reason.
  • Misrepresented NPR officials so badly on video that Glenn Beck’s web site debunked and denounced him.
  • Was arrested for entering the office of a U.S. Senator under false pretenses, presumably to tamper with the phone lines.

O’Keefe is an incorrigible liar whose antics have earned him the distrust of any reputable media enterprise. His video adventures should be regarded as fiction and dismissed out of hand.

This latest effort starred a couple of self-identified wealthy Russian drug dealers seeking assistance from Medicaid (Why would wealthy drug dealers need federal aid?). This piece has all the earmarks of O’Keefe’s prior fraudulent work. There is plenty of opportunity for him to have mangled the video to make the context unrecognizable from what actually took place. The audio could easily have been altered to make it appear as if the targets were responding to comments that were never made in their presence. There is no reference point from which to determine whether any of his targets had repelled the phony instigators. Surely any laudable behavior would have already been edited out by O’Keefe. This is textbook manipulation as practiced by O’Keefe in the past.

However, the worst part of this supposedly shocking expose is that there is nothing remotely shocking about it. First of all, O’Keefe failed to prove that any fraudulent activity had taken place. There were no applications for aid submitted or approved. Had it proceeded to that point the process would have required his agents to provide Social Security and other personal and financial information that would have prevented any such approval. And the Medicaid reps are probably trained not to challenge people who might be dangerous, such as Russian drug dealers. Consequently the reps were openly patronizing and repeatedly advised them to go someplace else.

Even if there were an opportunity to successfully commit some sort of fraud, it would have amounted to pittance that would hardly have an impact on the Medicaid budget. There is a larger question at play here. Is O’Keefe trying to make the point that there is fraud in the Medicaid system? Saints preserve us – that can’t be.

Nobody in or out of the Department of Health and Human Services would deny that fraud occurs and is a significant problem. That’s why the Department works strenuously to uncover and eliminate such fraud. They work closely with the Attorney General to prosecute lawbreakers. And their efforts bring results such as a bust earlier this year that snared 111 individuals who had been responsible for more than $225 million in false billings. The “Strike Force” set up to investigate these crimes has proven to be impressively successful.

Since their inception in March 2007, Strike Force operations in nine districts have charged more than 990 individuals who collectively have falsely billed the Medicaid program for more than $2.3 billion.

So what is O’Keefe’s team trying to prove? That they can swindle some low grade clerks into passing them off to other agencies while not actually committing any fraud? That they can save the government a few bucks while the government, without their help, is saving billions? If anything, O’Keefe and company are probably getting in the way.

That, in fact, may be their true intention. The only reason they engaged in this bit of childish play-acting is to disparage Medicaid and do harm to its mission of helping people get access to health care. O’Keefe would be satisfied if his deceitful operation were to put an end to Medicaid or cripple it by cutting its funding. Of course, Medicaid would not be the victim. It would be the millions of Americans who rely on it – the elderly, the poor, the young, the disabled. These are the people whose lives O’Keefe seeks to make ever more difficult. He must be so proud.

Don’t Forget Andrew Breitbart’s Legacy Of Sleaze

Posted by on June 9, 2011 at 11:21 am. 3 Comments :

With calls mounting for Anthony Weiner to resign, it would be prudent to take a look back at the public record of his accuser. It is Andrew Breitbart whose behavior is most repulsive and destructive. He is a liar and a hypocrite and causes far more harm than a horny congressman who never actually engaged in any sexual misconduct. If anyone should resign and skulk away in shame, it’s Breitbart.

[The following News Corpse article was originally published by Alternet]

Andrew BreitbartPublic apologies are often the source of captivating and prurient entertainment. There seems to be a genetic compulsion in the human DNA to observe our heroes, celebrities, and, of course, adversaries, fall from grace and beg forgiveness. This week we saw what may be Rep. Anthony Weiner’s curtain call but, like any good melodrama, he was upstaged by an ambitious and vainglorious rival, Andrew Breitbart.

After commandeering the podium at Weiner’s press conference, Breitbart declared “I’m here for some vindication.” He portrayed himself as a media-contrived victim of character assassination and challenged the reporters in the room substantiate their alleged assaults on his reputation.

“The media says ‘Breitbart lies, Breitbart lies, Breitbart lies, Breitbart lies.’ Give me one example of a provable lie. One. One. Journalists? One. Put your reputation on the line here.”

For some reason, no one in the room responded. It’s almost as if the press were clueless stenographers, unfamiliar with Breitbart’s past, and were incapable of providing a substantive rebuttal.

This is actually fairly typical of the modern press corps. Another example occurred when the New York Times asked Breitbart about the Weiner affair on Saturday and he attempted to strike a non-partisan tone saying that…

“I am as offended when John Ensign acts like an idiot, when Chris Lee acts like an idiot.”

Really? What the Times failed to note was that Breitbart’s BigGovernment blog did not publish a single story about the travails of either Ensign or Lee. Not one single story. How offended was he? Compare that to his obsession with Weiner that produced 17 separate stories and consumed every single headline (except for the plug for his lame book), and that was four full days after the story broke.


For those who are interested, including members of the press who were struck dumb at the press conference, here is a brief compilation of Breitbart’s reportorial resume, replete with dishonesty and deliberate disinformation. Feel free to offer these in response to Breitbart’s future challenges. We will await his profuse and heartfelt apologies.

1) ACORN: Breibart’s web site was the central agency for disseminating videos that were later shown to have been heavily edited in order to convey a fictional scenario that smeared a social service organization that had for years been assisting low income citizens with financial advice and voter registration. Every investigation of the affair exonerated ACORN and affirmed the deception of the videos. Breitbart’s henchman, James O’Keefe, is currently being sued by former ACORN employee, Juan Carlos Vera.

2) Shirley Sherrod: In this episode, Breitbart was responsible for slandering a USDA employee as a racist. Lately he has been defending himself by saying that he had included the “redemptive arc” of her story that revealed her innocence. But let’s not forget how he originally portrayed the situation:

“In her meandering speech to what appears to be an all-black audience, this federally appointed executive bureaucrat lays out in stark detail, that her federal duties are managed through the prism of race and class distinctions. […] In the first video, Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer.”

That is a pretty clear accusation of discriminatory behavior on the part of a federal employee. And it is also a lie. Sherrod did not discriminate against the farmer, as Breitbart later acknowledged, and the story she told was of an incident that occurred 20 years before she held a federal post. Nevertheless, Breitbart’s reaction at the time was another demonstration of his paranoid Narcissism as he whined, “As difficult as it probably was for her, it’s been difficult for me as well.” Poor guy. Sherrod is currently suing Breitbart.

3) Clinton Plotting a Tea Party Attack: Breitbart published a story with no evidence, about an alleged conspiracy that never came to pass:

“Big Government has learned that Clintonistas are plotting a ‘push/pull’ strategy. They plan to identify 7-8 national figures active in the tea party movement and engage in deep opposition research on them. If possible, they will identify one or two they can perhaps ‘turn’, either with money or threats, to create a mole in the movement. The others will be subjected to a full-on smear campaign.”

Also never coming to pass…a retraction. This story bubbled up through the media like much of Breitbart’s fiction, eventually getting coverage from Fox Nation.

4) Jason Mattera’s Punking of Grayson and Franken: Jason Mattera, who later became editor of Human Events, was employed to run a couple of “ambush” interviews that were posted on Breitbart’s web site. One interview targeted Rep. Alan Grayson and castigated him for his support of bill that funded a program to prevent child abuse. The other interview was directed at Sen Al Franken who was attacked for supporting student health and school safety. In both cases Mattera twisted the purpose of the legislation into something unrecognizable and patently false. Expect more of this because, as Breitbart says in his book, Righteous Indignation, “Ambush journalism is the most valuable kind of journalism.”

5) University of Missouri Labor Class: In another phony video sting, Breitbart published a video of the proceedings of a class on the history of labor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. As usual, the video was a deceitful mash-up that misrepresented the professors and students as supporting violent labor activity. The twist here is that it was Breitbart’s one-time friend Glenn Beck who published an accounting of the video deception and vindicated the professors. As a bonus intrigue, the party from whom Breitbart got the UM video is identified only as Insurgent Visuals. That, however, may be a ruse to disguise Breitbart’s long-time partner in crime, James O’Keefe.

6) Beck’s Back Alley Snitch: Speaking of Glenn Beck, in happier times when the two weren’t feuding, Breibart was the source for numerous Beck offensives. He provided Beck with scandalous material on Van Jones who, at the time, was a White House adviser on environmental initiatives. Beck lauded Breitbart, saying…

“You know where the great journalists of our time are? Andrew Breitbart. […] You were the only one, besides watchdogs, that were really aggressively working behind the scenes with us on Van Jones.”

The same thing occurred with Yosi Sergant, communications director for the National Endowment for the Arts. Breitbart went after him and provided the data to Beck, who said…

“This is again another Breitbart story, where the NEA communications director reached out and said, hey, listen, we have to be very careful with our language here.”

In both cases the information provided by Breitbart was vague and/or untrue, but both Jones and Sergant were jettisoned — just as Sherrod was — by a nervous White House for violations that were either false or greatly exaggerated.

7) Democrats Plotted to Blame Tea Party for Slaughter: Breitbart’s site featured an article that made the sensationalist claim that Democrats devised a plan to blame the Tea Party for the tragic shooting in Tucson, AZ. The allegation consisted of a single, unidentified source who merely offered his own opinion that the massacre could be pinned on Tea Partiers. There was no allegation of a conspiracy or even of any discussions of such a plan by anyone connected to the Democratic Party. But that didn’t stop Breitbart from posting the story with an irresponsibly provocative headline.

8) The Abbie Boudreau Affair: In one of the most bizarre adventures by the James O’Keefe gang, they set out to lure CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau into a floating love nest to embarrass her in some manner that was never really explained. While Breitbart did not act as the agent for this prank, he did provide a platform for O’Keefe to publish his defense after having been outed by an accomplice. O’Keefe managed to take a situation in which he appeared to be a revolting pervert and make it worse by saying about Boudreau…

“She would have had to consent before being filmed and she was not going to be faux ‘seduced’ unless she wanted to be.”

Considering the fact that he never sought the consent of his previous video victims, why should we accept his assertion that he was going to start seeking consent now? Even more troubling is his implication that his intended victim “wanted” it. O’Keefe is resorting to the disgusting defense that rapists offer about their victims. And Breitbart permitted this to be published on his site.

9) GEICO Gecko – Tea Party Crasher? Breitbart’s BigGovernment blog posted a mind-numbingly stupid article that accused Ricky Gervais, the actor/comedian and voice of the GEICO Gecko of disparaging the Tea Party in a profanity-laced voice-mail. The only problem is that Gervais had nothing to do with it. It was an actor (D.C. Douglas) who worked for GEICO a couple of years prior. But it wasn’t enough to smear Gervais with insinuations, Breitbart also posted a picture of the Gecko atop a table that was adorned with a poster of President Obama sporting a Hitler mustache. What that had to do with the story is anyone’s guess. It just appeared to be a gratuitous slap at the President while falsely slandering Gervais.

10) Racism: Breitbart is obsessed with the theme of racism. He is convinced that the charge is thrown around cavalierly, and mostly to insult Tea Partiers and himself. He embarked on a campaign to prove that congressman and civil rights hero, John Lewis, was lying when he said that he had been the victim of racial epithets when attending a congressional rally. He regards the Shirley Sherrod incident as an example of the racism demonstrated by the NAACP. But when discussing allegations of his own prejudice, Breitbart said this to radio host Adam Carolla:

“Can I prove that I’m not a racist toward Hispanics? Did you ever see Moscow on the Hudson? Remember Maria Conchita Alonso in that? The things I did to myself as a teenager prove that I’m not a racist.”

So Breitbart’s proof that he is not a racist is that he used to masturbate to pictures of a Latino actress. That defense would also work pretty well to prove that colonial plantation masters weren’t racist either because they routinely raped their slaves. Breitbart’s repulsive pride in his perverse view of racial open-mindedness tells us much about him. And he is certainly in no position to assess the veracity of people like John Lewis.

This should be a good starting point for the press in case they ever get the chance again to respond to Breitbart’s call for evidence of his dishonesty and low character. Here’s hoping that they are listening and that no one presumes to use the Weiner affair to rehabilitate Breitbart’s deservedly sleazy reputation. Just because Breitbart lucked into being correct (like a broken clock) doesn’t mean that his long-established pattern of deception should be dismissed. Just because Charles Manson didn’t kill Marilyn Monroe doesn’t mean that he’s innocent of every other crime attributed to him.

Breitbart deserves no accolades over this. His reputation cannot be rehabilitated after one lucky scoop sent to him by a Twitter stalker. And he still owes the many people he deliberately harmed an apology. Weiner, at least, was man enough to own up to his mistakes, eventually. Will Breitbart ever do the same? Not likely.

ACORN Pimp And Prostitute Going To Trial

Posted by on May 26, 2011 at 7:29 pm. 18 Comments :

O'Keefe and GilesJames O’Keefe And Hannah Giles are being tried for violations of California’s privacy laws. The plaintiff, ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera, contends that O’Keefe and Giles unlawfully recorded conversations with him that were later edited to misrepresent his remarks.

O’Keefe and Giles filed separate motions to dismiss the case and the court ruled against (pdf) both of them.

O’Keefe claimed that, the California law not withstanding, he had a First Amendment right to surreptitiously record and publish private conversations with anyone he felt like. The court disagreed saying that the law prohibiting recordings to which both parties have not agreed, and for which there was a reasonable expectation of privacy, did not have an exception for the media. The court cited precedent that said:

“…the state may not intrude into the proper sphere of the news media to dictate what they should publish and broadcast, but neither may the media play tyrant to the people by unlawfully spying on them in the name of newsgathering.”

Giles motion contended that she was not liable because O’Keefe was the one doing the recording. This laughable defense misunderstood the law to argue that only the person holding the recording device was liable. But it also demonstrated the shallowness of her loyalty as she quickly heaped all the blame on her partner to save her own skin.

Having ruled against both motions, the pair will go to trial for their offenses. If justice is served this won’t be the only time, and they won’t be the only ones. Ya hear that Andrew Breitbart?

Andrew Breitbart’s Latest Lie Attacks Labor And Academia

Posted by on April 29, 2011 at 5:15 pm. 8 Comments :

Andrew BreitbartJon Lovitz used to have a character on Saturday Night live known a the “pathological liar.” He would simply make up things to impress his associates and, as he settled on the perfect deceit, would exclaim, “Yeah, that’s the ticket.”

Andrew Breitbart has taken this notion to new levels. His capacity for dishonesty is boundless and entirely devoid of shame. The latest episode in his recurring series of video lie-fests takes place at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. The video posted at his BigGovernment blog shows a professor and a guest lecturer engaged in a discussion that includes statements that imply they are advocating violence on behalf of labor interests. “Yeah, that’s the ticket.” The only problem with this expose is that, like just about everything else Breitbart does, it isn’t true.

Judy Ancel, Director of Labor Studies at UMKC, is the professor in the video. She responded to Breitbart’s smear in an email with several examples of how Breitbart fiddled with the content to deliberately convey a meaning that did not exist in reality. For instance, she writes…

Breitbart is a master of taking quotes out of context, deletion of what doesn’t serve his purpose, and remixing to achieve totally different meaning. For example he has me saying:

o Breitbart’s version: “Violence is a tactic and it’s to be used when it’s the appropriate tactic.”

o The real version: After students had watched a film on the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike and the assassination of Martin Luther King, they were discussing nonviolence. I said, “One guy in the film. . . said ‘violence is a tactic, and it’s to be used when it’s the appropriate tactic.’. . . ” The class proceeded to discuss and debate this.

It is apparent that Ancel was quoting somebody in the film, not expressing her own views. This is typical of Breitbart and his ilk. It is the point I was making when I posted this video of Glenn Beck admitting that he idolizes Adolf Hitler:

Media Matters has some of the obviously manipulated video as well as the uncut versions that reveal Breitbart’s purposeful deception.

This project has all the earmarks of Breitbart’s modus operandi. It is precisely what he did to Shirley Sherrod. It is the very same tactics he used against ACORN, along with his protege, James O’Keefe. However, there are no credits for the video other than the name “Insurgent Visuals.” It’s odd that no one would want to take credit for what they must regard as a brilliant piece of investigative journalism.

However, after some investigation of my own, I discovered that Insurgent Visuals has a web site. Surely there would be some indication of who was responsible for this story. Nope. Just a short statement on their “About” page saying “We are a small collective of motivated political actionists intent on changing the world.” They are also intent on hiding their identity.

So I continued my investigation and discovered that Insurgent Visuals also had at one time a blog at BlogSpot. The blog was no longer available, but I was able to access it via Google’s cache. Once there I noticed that the blog’s contributors were Bruce Bronson, and some guy named — James O’Keefe! Who’da thunk it? So O’Keefe, a well-known lying video manipulator may have had an invisible hand in Breitbart’s new anonymous smear campaign. He’s certainly the guy I would call if I wanted to produce a phony videotaped assault on someone.

Prof. Ancel’s response to the video is worth reading in full. It outlines the dishonesty that Breitbart perpetuated as well as her outrage at having the privacy of her students violated and the forum for free expression in the classroom replaced with a chilling mood of fear and distrust. The email in full follows:
 
Contine reading →

Fake Hooker Hannah Giles Slams Deceptive Filmmaking

Posted by on April 4, 2011 at 2:45 pm. NO Comments :

Hannah GilesHannah Giles, the partner of right-wing propagandist James O’Keefe, who assumed the role of a prostitute in a series of videos designed to smear ACORN, is very upset about a documentary that she says intends to “shape a narrative that will change public opinion through the use of deception.” This critique will surely go down in the Annals of Irony with Colonel Sanders’ denunciation of animal cruelty.

Giles has taken to Andrew Breitbart’s BigHollywood blog to post a scathing critique of a documentary set to air on PBS’s POV series this fall. It’s called “Better This World” and PBS describes it as…

“The story of Bradley Crowder and David McKay, who were accused of intending to firebomb the 2008 Republican National Convention, is a dramatic tale of idealism, loyalty, crime and betrayal. Better This World follows the radicalization of these boyhood friends from Midland, Texas, under the tutelage of revolutionary activist Brandon Darby. The results: eight homemade bombs, multiple domestic terrorism charges and a high-stakes entrapment defense hinging on the actions of a controversial FBI informant. Better This World goes to the heart of the war on terror and its impact on civil liberties and political dissent in post-9/11 America.”

I haven’t seen this documentary and cannot comment on its presentation or accuracy. But I do find it ironic that Breitbart chose Giles to articulate this preemptive hit piece. It was Giles who gave birth to the ACORN project. She worked closely with O’Keefe to produce a video crockumentary that has since been proven to have been deliberately edited in order to embarrass its subjects and destroy the reputation of an organization they considered to be a political enemy.

Giles is, therefore, poorly suited to be a custodian of journalistic virtue. The only contribution she can offer this discussion is her intimate, personal knowledge of how to produce a dishonest work of fiction and present it as fact. To demonstrate her skill in this area she misrepresents the comments of the two filmmakers by juxtaposing answers to two completely different questions and reversing their chronological order to give the impression that they were related. Then Giles contends that this mash up was an admission on the filmmakers part to falsifying the narrative. Hannah sure knows her stuff.

In addition to the ironic absurdity of relying on someone like Giles to defend documentary integrity, Breitbart commits the sin of failing to disclose a glaring conflict of interest. The “revolutionary activist Brandon Darby,” who is an integral part of the story in the PBS doc, also happens to be a contributor to Breitbart’s web site. But rather than have Darby author his own first-person account of the events, Breitbart hands the job to Giles and nobody mentions Darby’s connection. They are, in effect, disparaging a documentary that they believe is unflattering to one of their associates without disclosing the association.

This is typical of Breitbart’s modus operandi: Lash out viciously at perceived enemies while accusing them of heinous acts that he engages in himself. You have to admire the audacity of Breitbart and Giles stepping up to accuse others of misleadingly editing film. These people have made lying an art form.

Stop Federal Funding Of Fox News

Posted by on March 21, 2011 at 1:44 pm. 24 Comments :

Defund Fox NewsA few weeks ago video pimp and propagandist, James O’Keefe, released a heavily edited and deliberately deceptive video that purported to expose an institutional bias at National Public Radio. It was quickly debunked and denounced as a fraud by analysts across the political spectrum, including those at Glenn Beck’s web site, The Blaze.

Nevertheless, partisans in Congress and agenda-driven conservatives in the press continue to behave as if the video were legitimate. The House of Representatives, on a party-line vote, passed a resolution to defund NPR – a purely symbolic gesture as the Senate is not likely to concur.

The latest attack comes from former NPR correspondent, and confessed bigot, Juan Williams, in an op-ed for The Hill. After first conceding that “NPR is an important platform for journalism,” Williams joins his conservative comrades in calling for federal defunding of NPR. But he also reveals his self-serving and vengeful motivation by slandering NPR in saying that…

“They’re willing to do anything in service of any liberal with money. This includes firing me and skewing the editorial content of their programming.”

Nowhere in the article did Williams support his contention that “liberal money” was behind either his termination or any of its reporting. This is nothing more than a personal vendetta on Williams’ part. He is merely using the funding debate to strike his own blows against a former employer for whom he obviously bears a deep resentment.

However, if the right wants to introduce the issue of federal funding of the media into the public debate, they should be prepared to see their own Fox gored. Fox News has been the beneficiary of government largess for years and it is time to stop it and make Fox pay its own way. As far back as 1999, there have been reports documenting how News Corp, Fox’s parent company, exploited loopholes in tax laws that permitted them to avoid levies that all other citizens have to pay. From The Economist:

“…News Corporation and its subsidiaries paid only A$325m ($238m) in corporate taxes worldwide. In the same period, its consolidated pre-tax profits were A$5.4 billion. So News Corporation has paid an effective tax rate of only around 6%. By comparison, Disney, one of the world’s other media empires, paid 31%. Basic corporate-tax rates in Australia, America and Britain, the three main countries in which News Corporation operates, are 36%, 35% and 30% respectively.”

The article goes on to describe how News Corp used a complex network of accounting dodges including as many as 60 shell companies that were incorporated in such tax havens as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the Netherlands Antilles and the British Virgin Islands. More recently, an investigation by the New York Times revealed that…

“By taking advantage of a provision in the law that allows expanding companies like Mr. Murdoch’s to defer taxes to future years, the News Corporation paid no federal taxes in two of the last four years, and in the other two it paid only a fraction of what it otherwise would have owed. During that time, Securities and Exchange Commission records show, the News Corporation’s domestic pretax profits topped $9.4 billion.”

When giant, prosperous, multinational corporations weasel out of their tax obligations, ordinary citizens are the ones who are forced to make up the shortfall. That is effectively a tax subsidy for the corporations funded by you and me and all of the indignant Tea Partiers who claim to oppose special interest favors for the elite.

What’s more, federal bailouts to corporations like General Motors and Citigroup provided them with billions of taxpayer dollars, some of which are eventually spent on advertising that appears on Fox News, in the Wall Street Journal, and other Murdoch assets. Additionally, financial institutions that receive bailout funds use some that money to acquire shares of News Corp and to finance and insure News Corp activities including billion dollar motion picture projects like Avatar and capitalizing mergers and expansions.

USUncut is mounting a campaign to expose this sort of corporate welfare. They should add News Corp/Fox News to their list. But why aren’t there more voices objecting to these handouts? Why aren’t Democrats in Congress drafting legislation to prohibit bailout and stimulus funds from being used to enrich partisan political operations like Fox News by funneling cash into their accounts disguised as advertising expenditures. Every time you see a commercial on the Fox News Channel for a Chevy Tahoe or a Citibank Visa you are watching your tax dollars flow into the pockets of Rupert Murdoch and his wealthy associates.

The right wants to defund NPR despite the fact that they have utterly failed to demonstrate any journalistic bias on the part of NPR. On the other hand, Fox News has been documented to be brazenly one-sided over and over again, yet they receive hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer financed subsidies. Well, no more.

Stand Up! Fight Back! It is time to end the federal funding of Fox News NOW!

[Update 3/28/11:] And finally there is some media attention on the fact that there are many U.S. corporations brazenly shortchanging the country. MSNBC via Daily Beast.

James O’Keefe Invokes The Punk’d Defense

Posted by on March 17, 2011 at 10:37 am. 6 Comments :

James O'KeefeSerial liar and video manipulator, James O’Keefe, is taking an odd approach to his his defense on charges of making unlawful, recordings. The charges were filed in California in a case involving former ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera, who was falsely portrayed in a heavily edited videotape as assisting O’Keefe’s phony prostitution ring when, in fact, Vera was skeptical from the start and notified the police immediately after O’Keefe left his office.

Now O’Keefe’s lawyers are claiming that he was within his rights to surreptitiously record the conversations citing MTV’s Punk’d as a precedent. This is so stupid that I have to wonder if Ashton Kutcher is providing O’Keefe’s legal defense team.

A team of four lawyers is defending O’Keefe on a pro bono basis in the suit filed by one of O’Keefe’s targets, and they’re citing everything from the writings of James Madison to Ashton Kutcher’s MTV show ‘Punk’d’ to a Woody Allen segment on ‘Candid Camera’ to claim O’Keefe’s ACORN sting is protected by the First Amendment.

Do O’Keefe’s lawyers know that Punk’d was an entertainment program that deliberately misled its victims with the intent of embarrassing them for the shock value? Perhaps they do because that’s a pretty good description of what O’Keefe’s Project Veritas does.

There are, however, a couple of significant differences between Punk’d and Project Veritas. For one, there was no malice or harm intended on the part of Kutcher & Co. They even included friends and family of the subjects in the ruse. Also, Punk’d always obtained signed releases from their subjects giving permission to release the videos prior to broadcasting anything. That’s a step O’Keefe conspicuously neglected.

Perhaps the most notable assertion in this line of defense is that it is an admission that O’Keefe is not a journalist, as he likes to portray himself. That is, not unless he thinks Ashton Kutcher is following in the footsteps of Edward R. Murrow. By aligning himself in sworn legal documents with a comedy show that features purposeful deceit, O’Keefe is undercutting any claim he may have had to First Amendment protections for the press.

Nice work punk.

James O’Keefe’s NPR Sting Debunked By Glenn Beck Site

Posted by on March 12, 2011 at 9:32 am. 17 Comments :

It should come as no surprise that James O’Keefe is an unethical liar who produces deliberately deceptive videos to smear his political opponents. That’s been proven on many occasions. What’s surprising is that now even Glenn Beck’s web site, The Blaze, is confirming this after having analyzed O’Keefe’s latest videos attacking National Public Radio.

James O'KeefeScott Baker, Editor-in-Chief of The Blaze, published a fairly in-depth review of O’Keefe’s scam wherein he compared segments of the edited version to the original unedited source material. What he found he described in his conclusion as “editing tactics that seem designed to intentionally lie or mislead about the material being presented.” Here are some of the overt misrepresentations O’Keefe manufactured:

1) O’Keefe’s edited video portrayed NPR’s Ron Schiller as happily willing to take a donation from a Muslim Brotherhood front group. The long-form video downplays the connection to the Brotherhood, and discusses its current status as a moderate, non-violent organization.

2) The edited video portrayed Schiller reacting approvingly in a discussion of Sharia law. The long-form video shows that the response was actually to a different subject entirely. It was just edited in to make it appear as if he was responding the discussion of Sharia law.

3) The edited video portrayed Schiller as hostile to Republicans and conservatives. The long-form video shows him praising the GOP. Those remarks were completely cut out.

4) The edited video portrayed Schiller disparaging the Tea Party as racist. The long-form video shows that those remarks were actually the views of others that was describing.

5) The edited video portrayed Schiller demeaning the intelligence of conservatives. The long-form video shows both him and his NPR colleague defending the intellect of conservatives and even Fox News viewers.

6) The edited video portrayed Schiller asserting that federal funding for NPR was not necessary or desirable. The long-form video shows him going into detail about the necessity of those funds.

When Glenn Beck’s web site calls out a conservative for being unethical, there must be something seriously wrong. His lies must have been so egregious that they surpass the threshold for lying ordinarily maintained by people like Beck. Part of me worries that this whole critique of O’Keefe is a prank and that tomorrow The Blaze will reveal that they were just kidding to see if liberals like me would pick up the story. But for the time being it appears to be a legitimate thrashing of a corrupt propagandist.

Granted, The Blaze is not nearly as judgmental as I am, and much of their criticism was couched as questions, i.e. the article’s headline: Does Raw Video of NPR Exposé Reveal Questionable Editing & Tactics? Yes, it does! But they seem loathe to come right out and censure their ideological ally. Nevertheless, this damning analysis is a significant departure for a Beck enterprise. Perhaps there has been some influence from The Blaze’s new boss, Betsy Morgan, who once ran the Huffington Post.

The examples above are representative of the grossly deceptive practices that James O’Keefe, a convicted criminal, engages in repeatedly. They are further evidence that nothing he does or says deserves to be taken seriously.

This also demonstrates the crippling naivete of NPR for reacting so hastily in compelling the resignation of NPR chief Vivian Schiller. Have these people learned nothing from the Shirley Sherrod affair when an innocent person’s reputation was dragged through the mud based on fraudulently edited video? And are they oblivious to the very real harm they do by empowering jerkwads like O’Keefe?

The only attention that O’Keefe and his ilk should get when they release a video or publish a story is from the Weekly World News or Comedy Central. Responsible journalists should avoid these obvious fabrications like the plague. Why anyone in the media would afford this known liar any respect given his propensity for bastardizing the truth is beyond me. They only embarrass themselves by doing so.

And that goes for the targets of these phony stings as well. People on the left need to have much greater resolve to defend their associates and their principles in the face of vile and dishonest attacks from the right. Otherwise we are handing them unwarranted influence over the debate and cutting ourselves off at the knees. That has to stop NOW!