New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller:

Some years ago, a colleague tried to sum up the essentials that set us apart from agenda-driven journalists of the right and the left.

The first is that we believe in verification rather than assertion. We put a higher premium on accuracy than on speed or sensation. When we report information, we look hard to see if it stands up to scrutiny. [my emphasis]

You know what’s coming when a Big Media guy starts bragging about Big Media accuracy, right? He’s about to screw something up.

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The L.A. Times’s James Rainey predictably seizes on the Sherrod story, in a futile attempt to rehabilitate his reputation after his mishandling of the ACORN story last year. If I told you that Rainey’s attempt at column is highly dishonest, would you be surprised?

Rainey first deceptively suggests that Ann Coulter has labeled Breitbart a fraudster:

But certain media outlets have played the story and the political ramifications for the Obama administration (and there are questions to be answered) as if they sprang out of the ether. There’s a continuing rush to talk about effect, and very little desire to talk about cause — the steaming pile of misinformation delivered on a platter by one individual with a giant ax to grind.

Andrew Breitbart, the conservative agitator behind websites like Breitbart.com and BigGovernment.com, likes it this way. Stirring the pot, gobbling up chunks of cable television time, doing whatever it takes to further his political beliefs, even if it means putting one woman’s reputation through a meat grinder.

The severely edited video posted on Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com shows Sherrod, who is black, telling an NAACP gathering in March that she had once scrimped on assistance to a white man in danger of losing his farm. Not included in the video posting was the bulk of Sherrod’s talk, in which she recognized the error of her ways a quarter of a century ago and helped the white man, saving his farm. As a result, the farm advocate and the white family formed a lasting friendship.

Breitbart headlined the video as “proof” that “the NAACP awards racism,” when in fact it showed one woman trying to teach a lesson about the shortcomings of racial discrimination.

Conservatives including David Frum and Ann Coulter have acknowledged that the video Breitbart posted is a fraud. But Frum, a former speechwriter in the Bush White House, wrote that he has seen this act too many times to expect Breitbart to apologize for “distributing a doctored tape to defame and destroy someone.”

Reading that passage, any reader would naturally conclude that Coulter has said Breitbart knowingly posted a deceptively altered video. But it turns out Coulter said nothing of the sort. Instead, she has proclaimed Breitbart innocent of fraudulent intent, opining that Breitbart was set up (a notion that Breitbart himself has dismissed): (more…)

Recently, Matt Welch and I utterly destroyed Eric Boehlert’s ridiculous claim that nobody at the L.A. Times was ever allowed to casually denigrate President Bush:

And I don’t even have to do a Google search to know for a fact that when President Bush was in office, there was nobody on staff at the Times, and certainly nobody writing off the opinion pages, who was allowed to so casually insult the office of the presidency on a regular basis.

Hahahahahahaha! Read Welch’s post and mine for the destruction of that singularly clueless claim.

I also observed that Boehlert’s whine about The Times’s terrible lack of respect for the office of the presidency was considerably undermined by the fact that he cross-posted his whinge at a site called The Smirking Chimp.

Boehlert has now responded — not with any undermining of Welch’s evidence, or mine, concerning his central complaint, but with this:

Fact: I did not “cross-publish” my column at The Smirking Chimp. Patterico might not now [sic] this, but in the wonderful world of the Internets, sometimes sites independently reproduce other writers’ work, which is exactly what The Smirking Chimp did with my column about the LA Times. As it does with many of my columns.

But Patterico makes a patently false claim about me in an attempt to portray me as a hypocrite; that I specifically cross-published my LA Times column at The Smirking Chimp. I did not.

Interesting, that word “specifically.” Almost like it’s a weasel word.

Let’s take a look at this claim that The Smirking Chimp “independently” republished Boehlert’s work, with no input from Boehlert. My conclusion: Boehlert is dissembling at a minimum, and more likely just flat-out lying.

Boehlert’s post appeared at something called “Eric Boehlert’s blog” at The Smirking Chimp: (more…)

Yes, that is really the title of his post. You’d think one glance at one of my year-end reviews of the L.A. Times would somewhat dispel that notion. And it would . . . for honest people.

But such a label does not easily fit Eric Boehlert, Senior Lotion Fellow at Media Matters, who asks how the L.A. Times can possibly allow one of its bloggers, Andrew Malcolm, to display something less than complete respect for the legend known as Barack Obama:

So my question is a simple one: Why does one of the largest newspapers in the country allow its political writer to routinely disrespect the president in a casually insulting way? To portray the president as some kind of punk. . . . [W]hy does the Times allows one of its high-profile political writers to continually adopt a hateful Rush Limbaugh and Fox News-like tone and personally degrade the presidency?

Indeed. Don’t they know that opinion people at major newspapers need to be kept in line? At least when they’re criticizing liberals.

Boehlert is upset because Malcolm has been allowed to call Barack Obama things like this:

* ”the United States’ Democratic Smoker-in-Chief”
* “the Real Good Talker”
* “Smoker-in-Chief”
* “the community organizer”
* “ex-state senator”
* “The Smoker”
* “the nation’s top talker”
* “what’s-his-name in the White House”
* “Duffer-in-Chief”
* “the ex-senator from Illinois”

Those are all pretty good, I’d say . . . and accurate. (more…)

The following is a document that James O’Keefe sent to me last night and has authorized me to publish. It is O’Keefe’s version of events in New Orleans. I believe this is the first time anywhere that he has publicly given his full statement of what occurred.

The document was drafted by lawyers based on O’Keefe’s statements, and was intended to be offered as the factual basis for his plea. O’Keefe confirmed for me that this document is an accurate account of what happened.

What Really Happened in New Orleans

Factual Basis

On January 25, 2010, Messrs. James O’Keefe, Stan Dai, Joe Basel, and Michael Flanagan (collectively “Defendants”) entered the Hale Boggs Federal Building located at 500 Poydras Street, New Orleans, Louisiana (“Hale Boggs Building”), with no intent to commit a felony, but rather an intent to engage in political speech with respect to pending national healthcare legislation (the “Healthcare Bill”). During the several days before their entry to the Hale Boggs building, Defendants discussed opportunities to engage in independent journalism and political advocacy. One of the ideas raised during those discussions was a method to test the truthfulness of Senator Landrieu’s statements as to the reason for the inability of Tea Party members and other Louisiana constituents to contact her staff on the telephone to discuss her vote on the Healthcare Bill. The Defendants were advised that this was a recent story in the news in New Orleans. (more…)

It’s a court document signed by the Assistant U.S. Attorney representing the Government:

The document can be read in its entirety here.

As I noted in a more detailed post below, the Government sought to bury this admission by omitting it from their press release, and attempting to avoid reading it aloud in court when setting forth the factual basis.

I have updated that post to note that I have now obtained the filed version of the document, with the signature of the Government’s representative.

Now I think it’s time to start asking the U.S. Attorney’s Office why they tried to hide this language from the public. (more…)

UPDATE after the jump.

****

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana has filed a court document admitting that James O’Keefe did not intend to tamper with the phones at Mary Landrieu’s office, or commit any other felony.

Oh — and the good folks at the Department of Justice don’t particularly want you to know that. This post reveals that, at O’Keefe’s hearing, the Assistant U.S. Attorney tried not to read that part of the document in court. What’s more, the U.S. Attorney pointedly omitted this critical information from their press release.

The news of the Government’s admission broke yesterday, when Big Journalism’s Larry O’Connor reported that a court document filed in James O’Keefe’s criminal case bearing the title “Final Factual Basis” contains the following language:

In this case, further investigation did not uncover evidence that the defendants intended to commit any felony after the entry by false pretenses despite their initial statements to the staff of Senatorial office and GSA requesting access to the central phone system. Instead, the Government’s evidence would show that the defendants misrepresented themselves and their purpose for gaining access to the central phone system to orchestrate a conversation about phone calls to the Senator’s staff and capture the conversation on video, not to actually tamper with the phone system, or to commit any other felony.

This news, which O’Connor relayed at the end of a post about Media Matters’ dishonesty, is a significant piece of news that deserves its own post. It is especially noteworthy because this paragraph comes from a version of the facts that the Government has agreed to by way of stipulation. The document contains the following language showing the Government’s agreement: (more…)

This is what libel looks like.

New York Magazine has claimed:

When we read this morning that ACORN-sting videographer James O’Keefe pleaded guilty today to attempting to tamper with the phones in Louisiana senator Mary Landrieu’s office, we wondered how Andrew Breitbart would react.

That is an outright falsehood. O”Keefe entered a plea to the misdemeanor crime of entering a federal building under false pretenses. The government couldn’t prove that he attempted to tamper with the phones in Landrieu’s office — which is why the charges were reduced to the far less serious misdemeanor charge.

The story links to another story at New York Magazine bearing the headline: “Activist James O’Keefe Pleads Guilty to Tampering With Senator’s Phones.” Wow — all of a sudden he’s not just “attempting to” tamper with the phones (which he never did) . . . in the headline they claim he actually pled guilty to tampering with the phones (which he didn’t do and didn’t plead guilty to). Here is the text of their bogus and false story:

Andrew Breitbart acolyte and sorta ACORN stinger James O’Keefe pleaded guilty, along with three other conservative activists, of trying to tamper with the phones in Louisiana senator Mary Landrieu’s office. O’Keefe, 25, will get three years probation, 100 hours of community service, and a $1,500 fine, but will no longer, presumably, be grounded. [WP]

False.

Let’s get screenshots in case they try to do a stealth correction, shall we? We shall: (more…)

Apparently Rachel Maddow has jumped on the pimp hoax bandwagon. Here is the beginning of Raw Story’s wildly misleading summary of Maddow’s wildly pointless diatribe:

When conservative activists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles released tapes last fall purporting to show ACORN employees advising them on how to set up a child prostitution ring, it resulted in widespread praise for their intrepid journalism and a Congressional defunding of the anti-poverty group. But it is now becoming clear to all but their most fervent supporters that the O’Keefe “expose” was deliberately misleading.

“If you were a member of Congress and you voted to defund ACORN because of the outrage portrayed in these tapes,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow proclaimed on Tuesday, “you were had.”

Last week, California Attorney Gerneral Jerry Brown released some of O’Keefe’s raw footage, which he obtained as part of an agreement not to prosecute O’Keefe for violating state privacy laws. Maddow reviewed several of the most severe distortions revealed by the footage, starting with O’Keefe’s claim that he was wearing his outrageous pimp outfit when he visited the ACORN offices.

I am unaware of any such claim. I know O’Keefe has been faulted, with some justice, for failing to contradict a Fox News yakker who made that claim in his presence. I’m inclined to go easy on him for that, because I think it’s easy to criticize people for on-the-fly decisions (especially decisions not to act) made while facing a nationwide audience on TV. In any event, a failure to contradict is not a “claim.” (more…)

For once, the liars aren’t winning. For months now, Brad Friedman has engaged in a fundamentally dishonest campaign to save ACORN, by claiming that an inconsequential detail about James O’Keefe’s costume somehow erased the fact that ACORN employees sought to aid what they believed was a child prostitution ring.

Now, despite Friedman’s best (but still dishonest) efforts, ACORN is dead:

The once mighty community activist group ACORN announced Monday it is folding amid falling revenues — six months after video footage emerged showing some of its workers giving tax tips to conservative activists posing as a pimp and prostitute.

Meanwhile, the New York Times is issuing a correction on the trivial clothing matter, but is continuing to accurately insist that O’Keefe “posed” as a pimp at ACORN: (more…)

This post debunks several liberal myths about ACORN that have emerged in recent weeks — many from Eric Boehlert of Media Matters and Brad Friedman.

POSING AS A PIMP AT ACORN

Liberal Myth: James O’Keefe did not pretend to be a pimp inside ACORN. Instead, he merely presented himself as Hannah Giles’s boyfriend, trying to help her escape from an abusive pimp.

Examples of the spreading of the myth:

Eric Boehlert:

O’Keefe pretended to be an aspiring pol, not pimp, in first ACORN vid.

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon:

The video implies that the advice about the 13-year-olds was given with the intent of helping a pimp control them. This doesn’t fit the circumstances. In fact, it appears that what happened was that employees were responding to requests on how to get young girls out of sex work, not keep them in.

Brad Friedman:

After not hearing from New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt for nearly a week — during which I’d sent him more and more indisputable evidence that Andrew Breitbart employee James O’Keefe never played his infamous “pimp” character in the offices of ACORN — he responded with a couple of blistering charges. (more…)

**Update here: Boehlert responds…

I am offering Eric Boehlert of Media Matters the easiest $100 he ever made.

All he has to do to earn the $100: unequivocally state whether James O’Keefe pretended to be a pimp at ACORN offices. If Boehlert makes the statement publicly — with no weasel-words, no two-stepping, and no qualifications — I will PayPal him $100.

Media Matters Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert

I made this offer to Boehlert on Twitter. He’s ignoring me. He even posted one Twitter message in which he said: “Leave me alone.”

Mr. Boehlert, I have you on the ropes. You think I am going to leave you alone? Have we met?

Here’s why Boehlert is ignoring me. He has spent days writing piece after piece about the Terribly Important Issue of whether James O’Keefe was dressed as a pimp at ACORN. But that is a red herring and he knows it. Because no matter how O’Keefe was dressed, he pretended to be a pimp at ACORN. (more…)

I was wondering how I had initially gotten the idea that James O’Keefe had been accused of trying to wiretap Mary Landrieu’s phones. After all, if you look at my original post — in which I mistakenly said O’Keefe had been arrested for “allegedly attempting to bug Mary Landrieu’s office” — I linked a Times-Picayune blog post as my source. Follow that link, and you’ll see it begins as follows:

Alleging a plot to tamper with phones in Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office in the Hale Boggs Federal Building in downtown New Orleans, the FBI arrested four people Monday, including James O’Keefe, 25, a conservative filmmaker whose undercover videos at ACORN field offices severely damaged the advocacy group’s credibility.

Hm. Nothing about wiretapping there.

When I read the affidavit later that day and saw there was no allegation of wiretapping, I tried to figure out why I had messed it up. I went back and clicked on the above link to the Times-Picayune blog post, where I saw the language quoted above. So, I assumed that I had just misread the story, and had leapt to a bad conclusion.

As it turns out, I hadn’t. The Times-Picayune blog post originally said something different: (more…)

If you’re like me, you’re tired of being lied to.

That’s what got me started in media criticism.  I would read the Los Angeles Times every day and shout at the newspaper’s reporters and editors over my cornflakes.  “This isn’t true and you know it!” I’d yell.

Of course, nobody over there was listening.  But they listen to me now… sometimes.

Back in February 2003, I started writing my blog, primarily as an outlet for my frustration at the bias, omissions, and distortions I found in the L.A. Times on an almost daily basis.

Since then, I’ve managed to get the editors’ attention a few times.

During the Iraq war, I questioned an L.A. Times report that a U.S. airstrike in Ramadi had “pulverized” 15 homes and killed 30 civilians.  My military and other local sources denied the report.  Based on my post, the editors backed off their initial claims.

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