Earlier this week, in a segment on his NPR video exposé, PBS’s NewsHour aired the false claim James O Keefe pleaded guilty to attempting to bug the offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu:

And last year [O'Keefe] was arrested and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of attempting to bug the offices of Louisiana Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu.

O’Keefe and company pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of entering federal property under false pretenses.  There were never any allegations of a plot to bug or wiretap Sen. Landrieu in the FBI affidavit and a law enforcement official conceded over a year ago that the four men were not attempting to wiretap or intercept calls.  Despite all that, the reporter from PBS makes a definitive and erroneous claim that the activists pleaded guilty to attempting to bug Landrieu’s phones.  What’s more, legal representation for the accused went on record in January of last year, almost immediately after the arrest, stating there were no intentions to tap phones in the Senator’s office.

The bogus media meme that O’Keefe was trying to bug or wiretap a U.S. Senator was proven false a year ago.  We advise PBS and its reporters bring themselves up to speed on this story before they report on it further. (more…)

Over the past several months I have had the honor of being Big Journalism’s official Correction Alpaca.  I’ve requested over two dozen corrections at Big Journalism and many others on Big Hollywood, Twitter, and via email.  Some of the news organizations I’ve addressed have done their journalistic duty and set their respective records straight, while others have neglected to fulfill this journalistic responsibility.  Others still have delivered what Patterico refers to as “stealth corrections,” that is, where a post is corrected without formal acknowledgment by the publication that the public record had been amended. We acknowledge there is a time and place for this, but it’s done far, far, far too often in the internet age.

If you recall, my responsibilities as Correction Alpaca commenced in order to alert the blogosphere of the mainstream media’s culpability and ineptitude in its mostly incorrect reporting of the James O’Keefe caper at Senator Landrieu’s Louisiana office earlier this year.  As of Wednesday, this saga, dubbed “Watergate Jr.,” by MSNBC has come to an end, with O’Keefe pleading guilty to mere misdemeanor charges of entering federal property under false pretenses and getting a proverbial “slap on the wrist” sentence.

So, in memory of “Watergate Jr.,” I would like to draw your attention to these sites, which at the time of this publication, still have published unforced errors regarding the prank in New Orleans:

Newsweek
The Los Angeles Times
The Atlantic… (more…)

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.

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 1/30: CBS News updated the link text highlighted below.

We thank them for their diligence.

***

Thanks to the sterling work of Patterico, CBS has corrected numerous errors in their coverage of James O’Keefe’s latest investigation.  Before: here.  After: here and here.  Still, CBS has thus far failed to correct a link alledging O’Keefe and the the other three conservative activists are being suspected of bugging.  A screenshot taken today just after 4pm PST:

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, Talking Points Memo, MSNBC’s David Shuster, and CBS News have already have posted corrections or retractions.