As my Executive Assistant often points out to me, when a story lands on your desk that appears too good to be true, it usually is. Case in point, E! Online’s article of March 3rd, “Sarah Palin and Grabby Entourage ‘Like Locusts’ at Oscar Gift Suite” by Ted Casablanca and Whitney English.  The background of the article is that Palin attended a pre-Oscars charity event put on by The Silver Spoon and the Red Cross to support disaster relief efforts in Haiti. E! chose not to properly vet the story and instead unleashed a mocking screed against Sarah Palin loaded with defamatory assertions that require immediate corrections.  The Silver Spoon responded to the misinformation spread by this article and others like it with detailed retraction requests.  Below are statements from E! Online’s article juxtaposed with text from the release from The Silver Spoon:

E! Online:

We’re told Palin was quite the prima donna and that she insisted the suite be opened two hours early so she could come when no looky-loos would be around.

Silver Spoon:

The governor arrived with a small group about 15 minutes prior to our store’s official opening; and upon arrival, she and her entire group gave generous donations to the cause. We offered to open early to accommodate her schedule; she did not ask us to open early. (more…)

**UPDATE: The New Republic issued the following correction:

This was corrected from an earlier version, which incorrectly stated that O’Keefe had to return to “prison.”

We thank them for their diligence.

In Lydia DePillis’s article “Bodacious? Xtremely!,” published February 21st in the The New Republic, Ms. DePillis falsely states that James O’Keefe had to return to prison after he left the CPAC conference this past weekend:

[Hannah] Giles was there to accept the first annual XPAC Award for Impact on behalf of her undercover partner, James O’Keefe, who made it to the conference but had to return to prison earlier that day.

O’Keefe was released from prison jail in January on a pretrial services “signature bond.”  He may travel within the state of New Jersey and out of state with permission from his pretrial services officer.  He did not “return to prison” after leaving CPAC, nor was he obliged to do so.

We kindly request the issuance of a formal correction.

We are requesting Keith Olbermann issue an on-air retraction to his repeated assertions that James O’Keefe required “permission from his parole officer” to attend CPAC in Washington, D.C.

Around :40 into the above video, Olbermann says:

O’Keefe accepting an award there, I kid you not, with permission from his parole officer, according to Politico. Trust the law and order party to check in with its parole officers.

Olbermann’s source, Politico.com, has since corrected the bogus claim that O’Keefe needed permission from a “parole office[r].”  Since Olbermann’s source has been discredited, Olbermann himself should correct the record as well.

Fast forward to about 4:00 into the clip and Olbermann has this to say to The Washington Independent’s Dave Weigel:

We’ll start with the law and order party, honoring the guy who needs to get his parole officer’s permission to attend.

The assiduous Patterico, who made a similar request of Olbermann last night, pointed out that this time, Olbermann neglected to source his false claim: “Note that, in the second passage, Olbermann does not attribute the claim to Politico, but makes it outright. Meaning he owns this falsehood and has an independent duty to retract it.”

(more…)

Update: Politico corrected this piece and issued the following statement:

CORRECTION: This story was altered to reflect that O’Keefe and Basel are on pre-trial release, not probation or parole, as was stated in an earlier version.

We thank them for their diligence.

**

In Kenneth P. Vogel’s piece “James O’Keefe says next video ‘ready to go,’” published by Politico on February 18th, there are a number of factual errors that ought to be corrected.  The problematic sentences are identified in block quotes with explanations of the errors beneath each quote:

O’Keefe – who had to get permission from his parole office to attend CPAC – told POLITICO he wasn’t sure if the terms of his probation would allow him to remain in Washington to accept the award or would require him to return to his parents’ home in New Jersey.

There are multiple problems in this sentence.  First, Mr. O’Keefe did not need “permission from his parole office to attend CPAC,” as he has never been paroled.  We’re not sure Mr. Vogel meant “parole office” or “parole officer” (the latter makes more sense since O’Keefe does not own or operate a New Jersey parole office), but the claim is factually inaccurate either way.   The lead entry for the word “parole” at dictionary.com is, “the conditional release of a person from prison prior to the end of the maximum sentence imposed.” In other words, in order to be paroled, one must first be convicted and sentenced.  Mr. O’Keefe, of course, is still pending trial.  In a statement to BigJournalism.com, Mr. O’Keefe said he was granted permission to attend CPAC from a “pretrial services officer” from the New Jersey Pre-Trial Services Agency.  The role of the officer assigned to him is to “investigate defendants who are charged with federal crimes and awaiting a court hearing.”  The operative word being “charged.”  Politico’s characterization of Mr. O’Keefe implies a conviction. (more…)

It’s hard to believe this mistake is still being made.  Actually, it isn’t that hard.:

In the column “CPAC Goes For X Factor With Young Conservatives” of February 19, 2010, David Gauvey Herbert of the National Journal refers to a wiretapping plot by James O’Keefe at the offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu:

Conservatives who celebrated O’Keefe after that takedown distanced themselves from him after he was arrested Jan. 25 in an attempted wiretapping scheme at the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La.

There are no allegations of any “wiretapping scheme” plot in the the FBI affidavit that was released nearly a month ago, which your reporters could have easily consulted in numerous places. Also, a law enforcement official has conceded that the four men were not attempting to wiretap or intercept calls.  Furthermore, legal representation for the accused has gone on record stating there were no intentions to bug the phones in the Senator’s office.

We kindly ask you to issue a correction/retraction to the story.

We have made similar requests of numerous news sources to correct similar errors. The Washington Post, MSNBC’s David Shuster, Talking Points Memo, CBS News, the Associated Press, Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic and TIME, among others, have already posted corrections or retractions.

No commentary necessary.  But go ahead anyway:

Sing along here.

“Retracto”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Credits:
Shelli Eaton- Lead vocals
Michael Broderick – Lead guitar, background vocals
Gary Eaton – Guitar, bass, drums, tambourine, background vocals
Retracto - Vocals
Music and lyrics by Gary Eaton

Retracto

The ass says he doesn’t have a horse in this race
But Retracto knows he does now he’s got egg on his face
The donkeys on the left got owned by a kid
They can say it was a crime but Retracto knows what he did

Retracto
The Correction Alpaca
Retracto
He’s comin’ at ya (more…)

Whenever one respectable media outlet publishes lies, misinformation, and distortions, an inevitable consequence is that other sites pick up the bogus story, repeat the false or unproven facts, and attribute them to the original source.  The original source is the tentpole, and if it’s broken, the entire edifice crumbles.  Or does it?

Do the writers and publications who merely quoted from the original article have plausible deniability and are thus free from guilt when the truth is fleshed out?  Are they are off the hook entirely?  Just because these sources can shift blame, does it mean they aren’t responsible for what is published on their pages and site?  If the information they publish is later proven to have no factual basis, retractions are still necessary.

All of the sites listed below point to Max Blumenthal’s Salon.com piece as a primary source.  It would be excessive to hash out the individual errors in each because all have been thoroughly documented here in our retraction request to Salon:

Gawker’s Alex Pareene writes a column “James O’Keefe Pals Around with White Supremacists.”

In the Newark Star-Ledger: “Fake ACORN Pimp Tied To White Supremacists,” by author John D. Atlas.

(more…)

Just a couple of hours ago, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs issued an update to his post “James O’Keefe’s Race Problems” of February 3rd,  which had spread the lie that James O’Keefe attended a “white nationalist convention” (Johnson diligently sourced this characterization of the “Race and Conservatism” debate to the website, One People’s Project).  To his credit, Johnson demands in his update that One People’s Project put up an uncropped picutre of O’Keefe “manning a table of racist literature” or shut up:

More importantly, it’s now incumbent on One People’s Project to put up the goods if they have them. They should release an uncropped version of the picture they said shows O’Keefe manning a table of racist literature, or they should retract that claim because they can’t prove it.

But earlier in the post, Mr. Johnson declares that it was incorrect for Dave Weigel to attribute the phrase “white nationalist conference” to him:

True, Mr. Johnson, but these are also your exact words:

While it is true Mr. Johnson did not use the precise phrase “white nationalist convention” as was noted in Weigel’s article, he said something very similar in the comments of his blog. In this case, Mr. Johnson does not attribute his claim that O’Keefe attended a “meeting of white nationalists” to anyone. (more…)

Yesterday the Village Voice published a piece “OPP: James O’Keefe, ACORN and Landrieu Stinger, Ran Racist Forum” which they erroneously claimed that James O’Keefe “organized a speaking forum for white supremacists.”  This Village Voice released this update this afternoon:

James O’Keefe and Race: An Update

The Washington Independent’s David Weigel has added some clarity to the story of James O’Keefe’s role at a 2006 “Race and Conservatism” event in D.C. that featured the controversial Jared Taylor, editor of the white nationalist American Renaissance magazine, as a participant.

In a previous post, “OPP: James O’Keefe, ACORN and Landrieu Stinger, Ran Racist Forum,” the Voice mischaracterized the event, saying that O’Keefe “ran” and had “organized” what we called “a racist forum.”

We also cited a Salon story by Max Blumenthal, “James O’Keefe’s race problem,” that talked about O’Keefe’s staffing a table that was “filled with tracts from the white supremacist right.” We mischaracterized the role in the event of the Leadership Institute (O’Keefe’s employer at the time).

Weigel, who says he attended the event, points out in a post this afternoon that it was “a debate, not a forum for Taylor.” (more…)

In Max Blumenthal’s article “James O’Keefe’s race problem” for Salon.com of February 3, 2010, Mr. Blumenthal makes a number of unverifiable and provably false claims regarding James O’Keefe’s attendance at a 2006 conference called “Race and Conservatism.”  Below are the list of quotes containing misinformation and an explanation of why they need to be addressed by the editors of your publication.

From left: Marcus Epstein, Jared Taylor, Kevin Martin, and John Derbyshire at what Max Blumenthal dubbed “a white-nationalist confab”

We kindly request corrections to all:

According to One People’s Project founder Daryle Jenkins, O’Keefe was manning the literature table at the gathering that brought together anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism.

As noted in this post here by Larry O’Connor, we contacted Mr. Jenkins, who identified David Weigel as his source for the claim that Mr. O’Keefe was manning the table.  Mr. Weigel has denied that Mr. O’Keefe manned the table and has no knowledge to suggest Mr. O’Keefe was involved in the orchestration of the event at any level. In an interview with BigJournalism.com, Mr. O’Keefe denied having planned the event.

(more…)

In an interview with Andrew Breitbart last week on MSNBC, David Shuster asserted that Mr. Breitbart hired the private investigator who uncovered the dumped documents outside of a San Diego ACORN office (exchange begins approximately 4:30 into video):

November 23, 2009, you reported that ACORN had been involved in an obstruction of justice because a private eye that you hired went to the ACORN offices in San Diego and found lots of documents.

At no point did Mr. Breitbart hire the private investigator who uncovered the ACORN documents dumped in San Diego.

Additionally, Mr. Shuster suggested that the documents uncovered from the dumpster at ACORN San Diego did not contain sensitive information:

When people actually looked at the documents, let’s see, they were documents of old fliers, food stamp applications, canvassing forms…

As has been well chronicled at BigGovernment.com, Private Investigator Derrick Roach found privacy-protected documents in the ACORN dumpster, including but not limited to credit reports, mortgage loan information, and bank customer records.  As Mr. Roach pointed out in his initial post at BigGovernment.com:

The laws governing how sensitive, personal information such as social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, immigration records, tax returns, etc. must be treated are very stringent, and thus it seems as if ACORN may have committed serious violations in that department alone, with thousands upon thousands of potential plaintiffs.

Given this information, it is clear that Mr. Shuster misrepresented the facts in regards to the ACORN document dump by intentionally highlighting only certain documents while ignoring other relevant ones.

We respectfully ask that Mr. Shuster issue a correction/retraction.

UPDATE: HuffPo corrected the post but did not post an update aknowleding a previous version of the story contained false information.

Moments ago the Huffington Post published an article by Lila Shapiro that requires a correction:

On Monday night, conservative activist and alleged wiretapper James O’Keefe went on Hannity to give his first interview since getting arrested in the New Orleans office of Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.).

It is provably false to claim any allegations of wiretapping.  There are also no allegations of any wiretap plot in the FBI affidavit that was released early last week, and a law enforcement official has conceded that the four men were not attempting to wiretap or intercept calls.  In addition, legal representation for the accused has gone on record stating there were no intentions to tap phones in the Senator’s office.

Furthermore, Shapiro sources the term “alleged wiretapper” to an Associated Press article that contains no mention of wiretapping or bugging.  The source is bogus and the term “alleged wiretapper” goes wholly unverified.

Last week, we requested the Huffington Post correct this post by Jonathan Turley.  That correction is still outstanding.

Please issue corrections/retractions to these stories post haste.

In a news brief published by the Greensboro News & Record on February 1, 2010, the segment “James Who” contains a reference to an attempt to “bug” Sen. Landrieu by James O’Keefe and three other conservative activists in New Orleans:

O’Keefe was busted last week and charged with attempting to bug U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu’s phone in the Hale Boggs Federal Building in downtown New Orleans

It also contains a claim O’Keefe attempted to tap the phones of the Louisiana Senator:

But he said that nobody should take his backing of the resolution, filed months ago, as an endorsement of O’Keefe’s attempted phone tapping.

There are no allegations of any attempt to “bug” or “tap” Sen. Landrieu’s phones in the FBI affidavit, and a law enforcement official has conceded that the four men were not attempting to wiretap or intercept calls.  Furthermore, legal representation for the accused has gone on record stating there were no intentions to wiretap.

We kindly ask the Greensboro News & Record to issue a correction/retraction to this story.

We have been/will be making similar requests of other news sources to correct similar errors.  Some, such as the Washington Post, MSNBC’s David Shuster, Talking Points Memo, CBS News, the Associated Press, Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic and TIME have already posted corrections or retractions.

UPDATE: The Richmond-Times Dispatch issued a correction to this story. We thank them for their diligence.

In the column “Gotcha Games: Stung” of February 1, 2010, Staff Reporters refer to a wiretapping plot by James O’Keefe at the offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu:

Now O’Keefe has been stung himself — busted in what looks like an attempt to tap the phones of Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, though a lawyer for O’Keefe and his co-defendants say they were just trying to get some undercover footage. Either way, they’ve landed in the deep sheep-dip.

There are no allegations of any wiretap plot in the FBI affidavit that was released early last week, which your reporters could have easily consulted in numerous places. Also, a law enforcement official has conceded that the four men were not attempting to wiretap or intercept calls.  Furthermore, legal representation for the accused has gone on record stating there were no intentions to bug the phones in the Senator’s office.

We consider this error particularly egregious, despite the reporters’ attempt to ameliorate the false claim with the words “looks like,” considering that the Richmond Times-Dispatch published this article several days after the release of the affidavit which confirms there was no attempt to tap phones.  We kindly ask you to issue a correction/retraction to the story.

We have been/will be making similar requests of other news sources to correct similar errors.  Some, such as the Washington Post, MSNBC’s David Shuster, Talking Points Memo, CBS News, the Associated Press, Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic and TIME have already posted corrections or retractions.

An Associated Press article dated Janary 27, 2010 on the incident involving James O’Keefe at Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu’s office was published by the Dallas Morning News with the following misleading headline:

ACORN foe arrested by FBI in plot to bug senator’s office

There are no allegations of any attempt to “bug” or wiretap Sen. Landrieu in the FBI affidavit, and a law enforcement official has conceded that the four men were not attempting to wiretap or intercept calls.  Furthermore, legal representation for the accused has gone on record stating there were no intentions to wiretap.

We kindly ask the Dallas Morning News to issue a correction/retraction to this story.

We have been/will be making similar requests of other news sources to correct similar errors.  Some, such as the Washington Post, MSNBC’s David Shuster, Talking Points Memo, CBS News, and the Associated Press have already posted corrections or retractions.

In James Gordon Meek’s article “ACORN prankster, James O’Keefe, arrested for incident at Senator Mary Landrieu’s office” of January 26th, 2010, Mr Meek twice referred to an attempt to “bug” Sen. Landrieu by James O’Keefe and three other conservative activists in New Orleans:

-The ACORN gotcha guy got popped by the FBI Tuesday on charges of bugging a Democratic senator’s office phones.

-As the bogus hardhats tried to bug an office phone, O’Keefe raised a cell phone “in his hand so as to record Flanagan and Basel,” the FBI said.

There are no allegations of any attempt to “bug” or wiretap Sen. Landrieu in the FBI affidavit, and a law enforcement official has conceded that the four men were not attempting to wiretap or intercept calls.  Furthermore, legal representation for the accused has gone on record stating there were no intentions to wiretap.

We kindly ask you to issue a correction/retraction to the story.

We have been/will be making similar requests of other news sources to correct similar errors.  Some, such as the Washington Post, MSNBC’s David Shuster, Talking Points Memo, CBS News, and the Associated Press have already posted corrections or retractions.

UPDATE: The Alexandria Echo Press updated this post to correct the highlighted sentence.

In Al Edenloff’s article, “Former aide to Ingebrigtsen charged in bugging of U.S. Senator” of January 29th, 2010, the author repeats a claim that Joseph Basel along with James O’Keefe and two others were involved in a plot to bug the offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu.  Aside from the title, the following sentence appears in the sub-heading and in the body of the article:

A former aide to State Senator Bill Ingebrigtsen, R-Alexandria, is implicated in a plot to bug the offices of U.S. Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu in New Orleans.

There are no allegations of any bugging plot in the FBI affidavit, and a law enforcement official has conceded that the four men were not attempting to wiretap or intercept calls.  Furthermore, legal representation for the accused has gone on record stating there were no intentions to bug phones in the Senator’s office.

We kindly ask you to issue a correction/retraction to the story.

We have been/will be making similar requests of other news sources to correct similar errors.  Some, such as the Washington Post, MSNBC’s David Shuster, Talking Points Memo, and CBS News already have posted corrections or retractions.

In Jordan Fabian’s post, “ACORN: O’Keefe couldn’t have deserved it more“ of January 26th, 2010, Fabian refers to a wiretapping attempt by James O’Keefe and three other conservative activists at the offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu:

ACORN took to Twitter to express its satisfaction with O’Keefe’s arrest with three other individuals after they were caught attempting to wiretap the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.):

There are no allegations of any wiretap plot in the FBI affidavit, and a law enforcement official has conceded that the four men were not attempting to wiretap or intercept calls.  Furthermore, legal representation for the accused has gone on record stating there were no intentions to tap phones in the Senator’s office.

We kindly ask you to issue a correction/retraction to the story.

We have been/will be making similar requests of other news sources to correct similar errors.  Some, such as the Washington Post, MSNBC’s David Shuster, Talking Points Memo, and CBS News already have posted corrections or retractions.

In the blogger known as DarkSyde’s post “Third Rate Burglary?” of January 26th, 2010, the author refers to an alleged wiretapping plot by James O’Keefe and three other conservative activists at the offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu:

In case you missed it, four people were arrested for trying to plant wiretaps in Senator Mary Landrieu’s office.

There are no allegations of any wiretap plot in the FBI affidavit, and a law enforcement official has conceded that the four men were not attempting to wiretap or intercept calls.  Furthermore, legal representation for the accused has gone on record stating there were no intentions to tap phones in the Senator’s office.

We kindly ask you to issue a correction/retraction to the story.

We have been/will be making similar requests of other news sources to correct similar errors.  Some, such as the Washington Post, MSNBC’s David Shuster, Talking Points Memo, and CBS News already have posted corrections or retractions.