times-picayune

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:

Alleging a plot to wiretap 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, a conservative filmmaker whose undercover videos at ACORN field offices severely damaged the advocacy group’s credibility.

That’s how the very same story was originally quoted at Ace’s. And at a whole bunch of other places.

See, the Times-Picayune originally said it was a wiretapping plot. Then, later in the day, they stealth-corrected their post. Meaning that when I went back to look, I was reading different language than I had originally read at the same link. I rubbed my eyes and thought: “I could have sworn that story said he had tried to wiretap her. Guess not.”

I wasn’t hallucinating. It had said that. I just didn’t catch the stealth correction — until now.

Weaselly move on the part of the Times-Picayune.

By the way, that fact-challenged CBS story has now been fully corrected. Glad to see it.