The Totalitarian Leftist Tactics against the Right

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As NPR's David Folkenflik says on Weekend Edition Sunday, conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck's website The Blaze has done some judging and concluded that O'Keefe did make some misleading edits.

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The Blaze wrote Thursday that some things O'Keefe did were "editing tactics that seem designed to intentionally lie or mislead about the material being presented." For instance, The Blaze says that in the edited tape "NPR exec Ron Schiller does describe Tea Party members as 'xenophobic ... seriously racist people.' " But, it notes:

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"The clip in the edited video implies Schiller is giving simply his own analysis of the Tea Party. He does do that in part, but the raw video reveals that he is largely recounting the views expressed to him by two top Republicans, one a former ambassador, who admitted to him that they voted for Obama.

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"At the end, he signals his agreement. The larger context does not excuse his comments, or his judgment in sharing the account, but would a full context edit have been more fair?"

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When his videos portraying ACORN workers seemingly aiding a couple in criminal planning hit the 24-hour cable news cycle, the U.S. Congress quickly voted to freeze funds for the non-profit. The national controversy resulted in the non-profit also losing most of its private funding before investigations of the videos concluded no illegal activity occurred. In March 2010, ACORN was close to bankruptcy and had to close or rename most of its offices.[8] Shortly after, the California State Attorney General's Office and the US Government Accountability Office released their related investigative reports. The Attorney General's Office found that O'Keefe had misrepresented the actions of ACORN workers in California and that the workers had not broken any laws. A preliminary probe by the GAO found that ACORN had managed its federal funds appropriately.[9][10] One of the fired ACORN workers sued O'Keefe for invasion of privacy; O'Keefe issued an apology and agreed to pay $100,000 in a settlement.

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O'Keefe stated he was out to make a point and to damage ACORN and therefore did not act as a journalist objectively reporting a story. The video releases were heavily edited to feature only the worst or most inappropriate statements of the various ACORN employees, and to omit some of the most salient statements by O'Keefe and Giles.

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Videotapes secretly recorded last summer and severely edited by O'Keefe seemed to show ACORN employees encouraging a "pimp" (O'Keefe) and his "prostitute," actually a Florida college student named Hannah Miles, in conversations involving prostitution by underage girls, human trafficking and cheating on taxes. Those videos created a media sensation.

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Evidence obtained by Brown tells a somewhat different story, however, as reflected in three videotapes made at ACORN locations in California. One ACORN worker in San Diego called the cops. Another ACORN worker in San Bernardino caught on to the scheme and played along with it, claiming among other things that she had murdered her abusive husband. Her two former husbands are alive and well, the Attorney General's report noted. At the beginning and end of the Internet videos, O'Keefe was dressed as a 1970s Superfly pimp, but in his actual taped sessions with ACORN workers, he was dressed in a shirt and tie, presented himself as a law student, and said he planned to use the prostitution proceeds to run for Congress. He never claimed he was a pimp.

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O’KeefeJames O'Keefe Avoids Jail Time pleaded guilty in 2010 to unlawfully entering the New Orleans office of then-Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) after he and three associates went to the office dressed as telephone workers in an alleged attempt to tamper with the senator’s phones. He received three years of probation, a fine of $1,500 and 100 hours of community service.

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Later that year, O’Keefe attempted to lure a CNN correspondent, Abbie Boudreau, onto a boat filled with sex toys in order to film the encounter and punk Boudreau, who was reporting a story on conservative filmmakers. Among the props O’Keefe reportedly intended to use were a jar filled with condoms, posters and paintings of naked women, fuzzy handcuffs and a blindfold. Boudreau declined the invitation.

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Yet the video includes several journalistic evasions and shortcuts that would likely elicit outrage from critics if a mainstream news organization had employed the same techniques.

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For example, it never mentions that Bonifield is a producer of health and medical stories, raising questions about how relevant his views are, and how informed he is, about CNN’s political coverage. It also doesn’t disclose that he is based in Atlanta not in Washington or New York, where most of CNN’s coverage of national affairs and politics are produced.

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Instead, the video identifies him a supervising producer, suggesting a senior decision-making role. O’Keefe, who appears on the video as a kind of master of ceremonies, furthers this impression by saying the footage describes the real motivation behind our dominant media organizations.

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But CNN said Bonifield speaks only for himself. In a statement, it said stood by him and that diversity of personal opinion is what makes CNN strong. We welcome it and embrace it. The network said it had no plans to take any disciplinary action.

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The video also doesn’t identify the man to whom Bonifield is speaking, nor does it provide any clue about how he came to record Bonifield.

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A Project Veritas spokesman, Stephen Gordon, declined to offer details on those points, saying that doing so could reveal the organization’s methods and identify its practitioners. He said, however, that the undercover journalist was introduced to Bonifield by a third party, whom he also did not identify.

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In recent months, both CNN and Fox have retracted stories on their websites regarding particularly high-profile topics on the left and right, respectively. Both sites issued similar excuses: A breakdown in normal editorial standards that led to something being published that shouldn’t have been.

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Yet in most other ways, the two cases are a study in opposites.

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CNN, on one hand, retracted its story within a day and issued an apology. The network immediately carried out an internal investigation. Three employees resigned. Those that remained were told that any future stories on the topic would need to be vetted by two top executives before publishing.

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Fox, on the other hand, took a week to retract the story, though it was debunked by other news outlets within hours. Little news of an investigation within the network emerged. No on-air apology was issued, despite a week of speculative coverage on the cable network. No employees resigned. And one of the network’s stars  Sean Hannity  continues to promote the conspiracy theory to this day.

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News commentator and former President Barack Obama aide Van Jones is skewering President Donald Trump’s White House on CNN for being gullible enough to fall for an edited, right-wing propaganda video.

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Part of conservative provocateur James O’Keefe’s newest video shows Jones standing outside CNN’s Los Angeles bureau saying, The whole Russia thing is a big nothingburger. There is nothing you can do

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But as Jones pointed out, this video omited important context about what Jones was saying and why.

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Did I mean that there is ‘nothing’ to the allegations that members of team Trump colluded with the Russians and then tried to cover it up by firing FBI Director James Comey? Jones writes. No and far from it.

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Jones said that he was actually talking about how Democrats need to focus on bread and butter issues rather than hoping that the Russia investigation will lead to Trump’s impeachment or resignation. Although he believes that there is something fishy about Trump’s relationship with Russia, Jones also thinks it’s unlikely that any evidence will come out that is powerful enough to force the craven GOP to oust Trump.

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That O’Keefe may have taken Jones out of context isn’t a surprise O’Keefe, as Bob Cesca noted, has a track record: Every single video O’Keefe’s ever produced has been resoundingly debunked

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His concern, in other words, is that too many Democrats see the Russia controversy as some kind of magical ‘get out of jail free’ card. They insist that we will be delivered from our misery as soon as the next shoe drops and Trump is impeached.

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This is what Jones meant when he referred to the scandal as a nothingburger.

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