PARAMUS, NEW JERSEY- On New Hampshire Primary Day, Project Veritas, while violating no laws, exposed the ease in which voter fraud can occur in states lacking voter identification requirements.
Project Veritas’ work has been praised New Hampshire’s legislative leaders, yet the reaction also includes articles by large media organizations that stated false and defamatory statements and articles.
The New Jersey Star-Ledger editorial board reported O’Keefe “committed a felony by fraudulently obtaining a ballot in the name of another person; [broke] New Hampshire law by recording another person.” Additionally the Star-Ledger Editorial board wrote January 22nd, O’Keefe is “still on probation for trying to tap the phone of Sen. Mary Landrieu. The Star-Ledger had previously printed a retraction for this claim on November 3rd, 2010.
Shaprton interviewed Paul Bergeron, the city clerk of Nashua, N.H., repeatedly states that voter fraud isn’t a problem in New Hampshire, but his own words to New Hampshire newspapers over the years suggest the opposite. Here’s what Bergeron said [my emphasis]:
SHARPTON: Now, Paul, according to what we`ve been able to get, including some of the information from Republicans, there`s been a case of one case of voter fraud in the last several years in New Hampshire. Just one in the whole state.
BERGERON: I`m only aware of one [instance of voter fraud]. It happened on the sea coast area and was a young man who used his father`s name to obtain a ballot. And he went to court and was found guilty and sentenced to community service.
SHARPTON: One out of three million votes. Just one. So if, in fact, this man Akit (ph) collected more than a dozen ballots during this film, he actually increased fraud in the state by 1200 percent to try to prove there was a problem that didn`t exist.
BERGERON: Yes, you don`t prove that there`s been voter fraud by committing it yourself. He`s establishing an activity that creates a voter fraud situation and it`s his own activity that should be looked at and prosecuted.
SHARPTON: So, Paul, you are there. You are the city clerk in Nashua. Do you feel there is a problem of voter fraud in the state?
BERGERON: No, I do not. I have not seen enough instances of any voter fraud in the state. I know the attorney general`s office investigates any claims of voter fraud and have not found any to be of substance.
The one instance that Bergeron was likely referring to is the case of Mark Lacasse, a 17-year-old from Londonderry who illegally used his father’s name to vote in the Democratic primary. Lacasse got caught when he bragged about it in school.
Bergeron has also attacked James O’Keefe and the Project Veritas in the local press:
“This is serious; we won’t tolerate voter fraud, regardless of what the intent might be.”
“If these are New Hampshire residents they should lose their right to vote forever, in addition to fines or imprisonment. I take it seriously, and people shouldn’t dismiss this as just a harmless stunt; it’s not,” Bergeron said.
But Bergeron is lying. Indeed, his own words show that voter fraud and election fraud happens in New Hampshire all too often. Indeed, it seems to happen whenever he bothers to look.
In 1999, “a Nashua man voted in one ward and then traveled to another ward and asked for a ballot using another’s name,” Bergeron told The Union Leader. Bergeron notes that the man wasn’t charged because his intent wasn’t to harm the electoral process, something that may portend well for O’Keefe should it ever go to trial.
In Plymouth, a Tilton man pled guilty to misdemeanor voter fraud and was fined $800, according to Bergeron.
In 2004, Bergeron told The Union Leader that he occasionally catches Massachusetts residents using mailbox addresses to avoid higher car taxes and accidentally registering to vote.
“Most of the time, we find it’s just an honest mistake,” he told the Union Leader. ”We would send a letter to that address, telling them they need to update their voter registration address and provide us with the actual residence. If they fail to do that, we would bring that information to the board of registrars the next time they hold a meeting, and request those names not be put on the checklist.”
Given how easily Bergeron caught address fraud in Massachusetts, it seems that Bergeron is upset that he was caught not doing his job of purging the voter lists. Bergeron, as of 2006, was paid $72,000 a year, making him the second highest paid city official in New Hampshire. (Bergeron was also once a Democratic candidate for public office in 1994.)
In New Hampshire, state election laws allow voters to register to vote on the same day. When you register to vote in New Hampshire, you first have to prove your identity and age with a photo ID. But while you are asked to present proof that you live in a particular place and are a citizen, you can sign an affidavit swearing to that if you don’t have the proper documentation.
But there’s a catch: these signatures are never checked, making it quite easy to commit fraud. Says Fred Teebom, a former alderman and candidate for mayor who told the Union Leader, “there’s nobody checking these affidavits … they’re just open invitation to fraud.”
Bergeron supports same-day registration. One election year, Nashua registered over 3900 new voters in just one day. There were anecdotal reports of voters being bussed in from local states. In Nashua, you can use an out of state voter I.D. when you register to vote and even just citizenship documents. (Mark Hayward, “Thousands in NH Register, Vote at Same Time; Inquiry Reveals Some Weak Leaks in Six-Year-Old System,” The Union Leader, December 13, 2000).
Bergeron wants to make that even easier. He recently told The Nashua Telegraph that he supported legislation that would have allowed proof of identification other than a valid driver’s license or federal ID.
Glenn Beck’s The Blaze has joined the “progressive” left’s all-out attack on James O’Keefe after his Project Veritas successfully demonstrated that dead people could vote in the New Hampshire primary due to the state’s lack of voter ID requirements at the polls.
Instead of focusing on the issue of voter fraud, Beck has slandered O’Keefe, stoking an apparent grudge that surfaced during O’Keefe’s successful NPR sting last year. At that time, The Blaze tried–and failed–to discredit O’Keefe’s exposé of political bias among NPR’s senior executives, which resulted in the departure of CEO Vivian Schiller. Today, The Blaze claims the New Hampshire attorney general is investigating O’Keefe, when in fact the attorney general is investigating the state’s voting system over the flaws O’Keefe exposed.
Ironically, Beck had previously treated voter fraud with the seriousness it deserves.
In 2008, he attacked “liberal whiners” for defending ACORN on the issue of voter fraud. In 2009, he attacked voter fraud by Democrats in the Minnesota election that saw Al Franken unseat Republican Norm Coleman. In 2010–relying on O’Keefe’s ACORN exposé–Beck attacked “progressives” and MSNBC, whom he said were promoting voter fraud in an attempt to help Democrat Martha Coakley defeat Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special election for U.S. Senate:
“Fix the rules! Make sure that it doesn’t happen again! The rules are severely flawed, clearly!” Beck exclaimed in 2009. O’Keefe has made the same case with his New Hampshire sting.
But today, Beck is so desperate to discredit O’Keefe that he has discarded his principled stance against voter fraud and thrown his lot in with Barack Obama’s legal team and dead voters.
Obama election lawyer Samuel Issacharoff (left). Source: NYU Law School
The left is desperate to quash James O’Keefe’s exposé of potential voter fraud in New Hampshire–and to prevent voter ID laws from being passed and enforced in states across the nation.
On Tuesday, during the New Hampshire primary election, members of O’Keefe’s Project Veritas recorded poll workers from both parties providing ballots in the names of recently deceased voters at multiple polling places across the state.
New Hampshire does not require voters to present photo identification at polling places. The state’s Republican legislature passed a voter ID law last year, but Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat, vetoed the measure, and the state senate failed to override his veto.
Left-wing groups and the Obama administration are targeting voter ID laws in advance of the 2012 election. Recently, for example, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder blocked South Carolina’s new voter ID law.
Ryan Reilly of Talking Points Memo (TPM) Muckrackerhas attacked the Project Veritas sting in an article alleging that “O’Keefe’s allies could face criminal charges on both the federal and state level for procuring ballots under false names.” Citing “election law experts,” Reilly concludes that the undercover video “doesn’t demonstrate a need for voter ID laws at all.”
The media has picked up Muckraker’s talking points (pun intended) and run with them. Salon.com, for example, smugly declares: “O’Keefe has pretty clearly violated the law and TPM reports that a federal prosecutor is reviewing his video. But at least he finally proved that voter fraud is a very real threat….As we all know, once you prove that something is hypothetically possible, it is a factual certainty that ACORN has done it.”
Even the Wall Street Journal fell into step, citing Reilly’s article: “Election law experts say James O’Keefe’s affiliates who got the ballots under false names could face criminal charges, as federal law bans not only the casting of such ballots, but their procurement as well, according to TPM.” Few of the media outlets repeating Reilly’s claims appear to have consulted “election law experts” with different opinions.
Curiously, one of the experts Reilly spoke to is Samuel Issacharoff of NYU Law School.
James O’Keefe, founder of Project Veritas, was recognized this week by Forbes Magazine in its list of “30 Under 30″ within the media category for his investigation of National Public Radio. The investigation led to the resignation of NPR’s CEO and a vote in the House of Representatives to defund the taxpayer-funded organization.
Somewhere a MMfA employee is crying, huddled in a corner over this nod.
- The conservative and progressive blogosphere unite against SOPA. (Kill the bill.)
A Pentagon public relations program that sought to transform high-profile military analysts into “surrogates” and “message force multipliers” for the Bush administration complied with Defense Department regulations and directives, the Pentagon’s inspector general has concluded after a two-year investigation …
… The results of the new inquiry, first reported by The Washington Times, confirm that the Pentagon under Donald H. Rumsfeld made a concerted effort starting in 2002 to reach out to network military analysts to build and sustain public support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The inquiry found that from 2002 to 2008, Mr. Rumsfeld’s Pentagon organized 147 events for 74 military analysts. These included 22 meetings at the Pentagon, 114 conference calls with generals and senior Pentagon officials and 11 Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Twenty of the events, according to a 35-page report of the inquiry’s findings, involved Mr. Rumsfeld or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or both.
One retired officer, the report said, recalled Mr. Rumsfeld telling him: “You guys influence a wide range of people. We’d like to be sure you have the facts.”
The inspector general’s investigation grappled with the question of whether the outreach constituted an earnest effort to inform the public or an improper campaign of news media manipulation.
Whenever I think of the Huffington Post newsroom I think of the frat house from “PCU.” That’s the only possible explanation for the is-it-or-isn’t-it-true story posted to HuffPo yesterday detailing how Eric Boehlert firmly believes that the bearded Verizon guy at his house was part of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
A short, bearded man stood outside, holding a clipboard and wearing a Verizon uniform. He asked Boehlert if he’d be willing to take a customer survey. Verizon had, perhaps coincidentally, been at the house a week earlier to handle a downed wire. Boehlert quickly agreed and noted that a Verizon worker had actually failed to show up when he said he would.
But as the survey went on, it started getting strange. “The only weird part before he got to his final question was he started telling me, ‘Oh, you know, it’s really tough out there, the economy, and I’m just happy to have a job,’ and stuff like that, which I thought was weird for a customer rep to be telling one of his customers,” Boehlert recalled to HuffPost.
“So he gets to the last questions, and he’s really reading intently off of his clipboard, and he says something about making the kind of salary I do, working from home, something something about the 99 percenters,” Boehlert said.
The man claiming to be a Verizon representative finally asked his question. “After he mentioned my salary and that I work from home, all the bells went off, and this is not who this guy says he is. Therefore, I kind of lost track of the exact wording of the question, but it definitely was like very accusatory of me and I’m a hypocrite and how do I have this supposedly cushy job while I’m writing about real workers and the people of the 99 percent,” said Boehlert.
“So there was this pause, and I said, ‘You work for Verizon?’ And he just sort of looks back at me and [says], ‘Will you answer the question? Will you answer the question?’ And I said, ‘Can I see your Verizon ID?’ And he wouldn’t produce any Verizon ID, and I think he asked me another time to answer the question. And basically I just said, ‘I’m done so you can leave now.’”
The man started to walk off.
Boehlert decided to follow him to obtain his license plate number. By now he had realized that the man was likely pulling a political stunt, and James O’Keefe’s notorious “To Catch a Journalist” project came to mind as a possibility.
Are you ready to lose more brain cells without the benefit of alcohol? Read on.
Put together by Josh Stearns, this document has been a great resource to track journalists working on Occupy Wall Street stories around the country who’ve been arrested. So who are they? Only seven of the 25 arrested are full-time employed traditional news-gathering employees. A number were student reporters; a few were interns; a larger number were freelancers. Some work for traditional “objective” news organizations; others work for “non-objective” news organizations, like Alternet and Indypendent Reader.
Yes, Alternet and Indypendent Reader, two lefty websites, the latter which comes across more as activism (replete with glowing reports of #OWS) than an actual media website. The presupposition you’re supposed to share as a reader of their memes is that every single arrested journalist was the antithesis of Natasha Lennard. If the hyper-fellation of this movement in the press is any indication–as well as the press’s blatant obfuscation of the rapes, shootings, etc. therein–it’s not a leap of logic to assume that other members of lefty media sites perhaps crossed the line of observation-to-participation like Lennard.
The number of journalists arrested at Occupy Wall Street has now reached six (there may be more), but the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) has had enough. It is publicly denouncing the arrests of those covering all Occupy protests and is demanding that Michael Bloomberg and city officials from across the country drop the charges against detained reporters.
Funny: According to SPJ’s own bylaws, some of those arrested might not even qualify for membership within the group. For whom are they speaking? The couple of AP photogs arrested? When the cops order you to get out of the way your media cred doesn’t recuse you from following the law. The press can be aggressive to the point where they ignore the physical safety of others, even presidential primary candidates. Why have some media present at the exact same locations not been cuffed whereas a couple others were? The futile attempt to argue this as an attack on the press only underscores further media bias.
I’m willing to give some of them the benefit of the doubt, but they can’t rage “against” the machine after being its lapdog for fifty years, all while expecting public sympathy. If they want to be truly revolutionary, they’ll pull a Steve Kroft and stick a camera in Nancy Pelosi’s face while asking her how she came in to that Visa IPO or maybe set up shop in the DOJ while Holder fidgets under Fast and Furious scrutiny.
At least three top names from the company have departed this month, including Brad Garlinghouse, head of the company’s Silicon Valley office, who quit last week. Mr Garlinghouse’s departure came on the same day that Sarah Lacy, a senior writer at TechCrunch, said she was leaving, and just days after Saul Hansell, a former New York Times reporter who was a senior editor at the Huffington Post, quit his job.
Right-Wing’s Pelosi Smear Ignores Historic Credit Card Reform Passed Under Her Watch
And MMfA didn’t stop there. It was like watching a one-legged man off to the races, down the track of a newly discovered dastardly Right-Wing smear campaign in action:
Breitbart.tv: “60 Minutes Challenged Nancy Pelosi On Her Conflict Of Interest While Speaker And Facilitating Financial Reform While Being Involved With Credit Card Companies.” The exchange was posted on Andrew Breitbart’sBreitbart.tv website, promoting the notion that Pelosi faced a “conflict of interest” while overseeing credit card reform as Speaker:
Fox Nation: “Pelosi Visibly Shaken When ‘60 Minutes’ Confronts Her About Shady Investments.” Fox Nation suggested that the exchange demonstrated that Pelosi had “shady investments”:
From there, MMfA quickly circled the wagons around the former Speaker, desperate to show her as an innocent champion of the people against those evil credit card companies–one of which she seems to have invested with on favorable terms, despite relevant legislation making its way through the Congress she then led.
Wall Street Journal: “Congress And The White House Are Taking Aim At Controversial Credit-Card Practices.” In April 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported:
McClatchy: “Consumers … Would Get Strong New Protection” Under Credit Cardholders’ Bill Of Rights. McClatchy reported in May 2009:
In a curious nod to James O’Keefe-style guerrilla filmmaking, Steve Kroft of CBS’s 60 Minutes turned up at Capitol Hill press conferences yesterday with surprise questions for both House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
Kroft quizzed both about their stock transactions in their respective roles as Speaker.
In the segment above, it’s fascinating to watch Howard Kurtz and his two guests, Glynis MacNicol and Paul Farhi, agree 100% with one another. This, of course, is how the MSM creates their own reality, how they intentionally create an atmosphere where if you’re watching and disagree with them you’re the weirdo, you’re the odd man out. Judging from the James O’Keefe undercover video in question, this sinister ability to create this false reality is something Kurtz and company learned at J-school.
Watch O’Keefe’s video and see if you catch my meaning:
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In the eyes of Kurtz and the two “Reliable Sources” guests he brought on so they could all dutifully agree 100% with one another, O’Keefe’s “sting” is much ado about nothing because it was filmed at a seminar that recently took place at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, taught by professors Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky. Which begs the question…
Isn’t that… worse?
I’m not saying Kurtz and company are correct in their coordinated wrist-flicking of O’Keefe’s larger point, but even if they were, the fact that they and the rest of their MSM counterparts dismiss this troubling video betrays another kind of bias.
I would actually be more comfortable with O’Keefe’s video if it had been shot in the boardroom of the New York Times as opposed to a college seminar. The Times is at the very least a private business. A university, on the other hand, is where you expect to see an environment open to all ideas, and yet what I see Rosen and Shirky (mostly Shirky) doing is what I saw Kurtz and company do in the clip above–creating their own false reality.
University professors enjoy a captive audience, and it’s just fact that if you want a job in the “elite” (Shirky’s word, not mine) media you have to attend a J-school like the one that held this particular seminar. And what do we see going on in this environment? Two professors abusing their captive audience by pretending there’s only one valid belief system. This is especially obvious at the 6:10 mark where Shirky says (as though it’s a settled fact) that Rep. Michele Bachmann is “unelectable,” incapable of governing, and that mainstream Midwesterners won’t vote for her.
From my vantage point, Shirk is abusing his position in four ways (and I’m likely missing a few):
Earlier this morning, James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas released a new video that sheds light on the way the New York Times promotes its favored candidates and causes, from Barack Obama to Occupy Wall Street.
The video is an undercover recording of a recent seminar at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, taught jointly by professors Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky. Both have done work for the Times in the past–Rosen as a writer, and Shirky apparently as a consultant.
Rosen and Shirky openly admit that the Times is a “liberal” newspaper. In fact, they also argue that it should be more open about its bias, in order to regain the trust of its readers.
And Rosen and Shirky discuss the “dilemma” the Times faces as it shapes current events through its coverage without admitting to its readers, or even to itself, that it is doing so.
Shirky describes, for example, the way that the Times tried to legitimize Obama’s early candidacy for president–without appearing to do so, lest it be accused of bias: (more…)
For starters, what Jason Mattera and the likes of James O’Keefe are doing is absolutely no different than what made the oh-so-legendary Mike Wallace oh-so-legendary. When the left uses these tactics, it’s heralded as holding power accountable and the brave pursuit of the truth. But now that New Media has given the right a chance to pick up that sword, it’s called unethical, and worse, it becomes The Story as opposed to the truth those tactics helped to uncover. But that, of course, is part of the plan. By making Mattera and O’Keefe the story, the corrupt MSM doesn’t have to talk about Obama’s ties to ACORN or the false statistics repeatedly spouted by a sitting Vice President.
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Secondly, what else are those of us interested in the truth supposed to do? Joe Biden, the Vice President of the United States, runs around America demagoguing and spreading false statistics with the unconscionable claim that if Republicans don’t pass Son of Stimulus women will be raped, and the sycophant media lets him get away with it. There were likely dozens of so-called reporters following the Vice President around, and had Mattera not stepped up to the plate, Biden would’ve gotten away with this outrage.
In a just world, we would not know James O’Keefe’s name. Don’t misunderstand me; O’Keefe is my hero, and if I won the lottery, his Project Veritas would receive more money than he would know what to do with. But the reason we know O’Keefe’s name is because our media is so in the tank for the left that he and Hannah Giles were able to become famous by taking down that sinister den of corruption known as ACORN. In my mind, they didn’t become famous for putting ACORN out of business; they became famous for stepping into a vacuum created by a corrupt media. Anyone paying attention knew ACORN was corrupt. That was low-hanging fruit, but the leftist media consciously refused to pick it.
When George W. Bush was President, one thing we never had to worry about was the kind of corruption both political parties are capable of. And so for all their overreach and bias, at the very least we could rest easy in the knowledge that if anyone in the Bush Administration crossed the line, the MSM would pounce. This is true for all things Republican and conservative, and that is a good thing.
In a new undercover investigation, my colleague James O’Keefe and I reveal the apparent collusion between Ohio public sector unions and their purportedly “objective” allies in media and academia as they try to undermine public support for new labor reforms.
Union front groups We Are Ohio (WAO) and Progress Ohio are currently promoting a “no” vote on Issue 2, which is a referendum on Ohio’s Senate Bill 5, to be held on Election Day 2011 (November 8). SB 5 requires public employees to contribute a modest amount more towards their benefits, to close the gap somewhat with their private sector counterparts.
In attempting to defeat SB 5, union advocates have loudly trumpeted a study by Rutgers Professor Jeffrey Keefe that claims that public employees already earn less private sector workers do in comparable jobs.
For instance, Jeff Bell of Columbus Business First reported that when inquiring about public employees’ superior pay and benefits, WAO spokeswoman Melissa Fazekas “quickly steered [him] to a study on the compensation issue completed this year by Jeffrey Keefe.”
However, Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation and Andrew Biggs (no relation to Jax) of the American Enterprise Institute have found Keefe’s study to be, in Biggs’ words, “a piece of junk.”
In their own September 14th study, Richwine and Biggs conclude that while public employees receive 2.5 percent less in wages than their private counterparts, “when pay and benefits are taken into consideration public workers received 31.2 percent more in total compensation.” When other factors are taken into account, such as job security, “Ohio public-sector workers are paid 43.4percent more.” Richwine and Biggs conclude that under SB 5, public employees would still maintain this edge over private sector workers.
Keefe also works for the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a Washington, DC think tank that boasts that it is “beholden to no one; we say what we think is true regardless of who might not want to hear it.” The EPI also claims that it “conducts research according to the rigorous standards of objectivity,” and “provides data … that allows for a clear, unbiased understanding of the economy’s effect on the living standards of working Americans.”
James and I had an agent at Project Veritas contact Keefe, posing as “Chris Fowler,” a researcher for a hedge fund manager who had chosen to work alongside the Ohio Education Association. “Fowler” offered Keefe a commission in exchange for authoring a study showing that cuts to education and collective bargaining “rights” hurt students, emphasizing that “if [EPI] find[s] evidence contrary to what our intended outcome is, we just, we want to make sure that they will omit that kind of data,” to which Keefe responded reassuringly, “Oh, what they’ll do, is they’ll not publish it … We’re not going to change the results of any study, but if it’s something you don’t want published, we’ll kill it.”
Shortly thereafter, I approached Keefe at a public symposium on SB 5 at the University of Toledo. I offered him an opportunity to defend his standards of objectivity, and, subsequently, to explain the phone call.
Keefe began by assuring that he had not and “never would” accept what I described as a “pay for play deal in which [he would] agree to kill any research that didn’t support a pro-union conclusion,” explaining that it was “the interviewer [who] said that” [emphasis mine].
However, at no point during the phone call did Keefe decline the deal. In fact, the word “kill” was not the interviewer’s. It was his–specifically.
I then asked Keefe if he “would not accept a pay-for-play deal,” to which he responded: “Never, in fact what I told the interviewer is they had to go bargain with the EPI, not me.” That is true. He did advise our agent that his compensation would be worked out with the EPI, but under the apparent implicit understanding he would be the one commissioned, explaining, “[the EPI] bring a lot of resources to the table that’s very helpful for me to do this work.”
When I read him the EPI mission statement, asserting that it “conduct[s] research according to rigorous standards of objectivity,” Keefe affirmed it, saying, “Absolutely.”
Yet during the phone call, Keefe had emphasized how it is “important to do business with policy institutes rather than academics,” laughingly noting that “[a]cademics believe in publish or perish … no matter what the outcome is.” He reassured us that “Policy institutes have an policy agenda … The thing about EPI is when they publish something, it’s highly reliable and credible, but if it’s contrary to what you want, and what they want, they just, they pay for it, and they kill it.”
Earlier in the call, Keefe recommended that our caller contact EPI President Larry Michele and Policy Matters Ohio executive director Amy Hanauer, which he did, offering the same deal. Sam Stein of The Huffington Post reported, after hearing from both of them, that both had declined the deal offered by our interviewer, with Hanauer explaining: “They were fishing for us to say we would release it if it had a pro-union point of view or kill it if it didn’t.” Michel added, “I told him, you know, you can’t buy results.”
Policy Matters Ohio released a statement claiming to be “amused” by our “trying to get [their] director, Amy Hanauer to reveal a desire to deliver biased research,” adding: “Policy Matters is not for sale. We do unassailable research.”
We commend Hanauer and Policy Matters Ohio for maintaining their integrity, but their deserved self-vindications do not make the situation any less awkward for Keefe or EPI.
Worse, like mosquitoes to a bug-zapper, mouthwatering liberal media flocked to Stein’s incomplete narrative. Deriding our investigation as a “ratfucking” effort, Huffington’’s Dan Mirvish accused James of getting “caught with his pants down.” David Dayen of Jane Hamsher’s FireDogLake mocked it, facetiously describing it as “a brilliant plan.” Joseph Anonymous of liberal Ohio blog Plunderbund, advised us: “Consider this your notice, boys. Everyone in Ohio is on to your scam.” Laura Clawson of Daily Kos wrote: “Calling [James] on it before he has the chance? That’s pretty awesome.”
Forced to choose between left-wing bias and federal stimulus, National Public Radio is choosing left-wing bias.
And that’s something to welcome.
As reported yesterday morning by NPR’s David Folkenflik, after the scandals and resignations of the past year, the organization has quietly begun plans to wean itself from federal funding:
Behind the scenes, NPR executives quietly mapped out what the public radio system might look like without those federal dollars.
The questions were not easily resolved. What cuts would that entail? Which stations would falter? Would the creation of a major new endowment for NPR allow the network to reduce the fees paid by stations to carry its programs? Or would such an endowment better belong to the entire system?
NPR’s board, which is dominated by member station officials, is far from unified on this subject. But the discussion itself was notable.
Former CEO Vivian Schiller–now working for NBC, and regarding NPR as a competitor–tweeted her opposition to federal funding over the weekend:
Question: What do leprechauns, hookers, anti-Semite Muslims, Russian coke heads, drunken New Jersey teachers and pregnant 14 year olds have in common?
Answer: James O’Keefe
More specifically, these absurd caricatures have been used by James to incinerate the paper thin façade of tolerance and morality projected by the liberal establishment. The mainstream media has had a particularly difficult time swallowing the phenomenon of O’keefian investigative tactics. Perhaps this is due to journalistic envy. After the ACORN scandal, John Stewart memorably lamented “I’m a FAKE journalist and I’m embarrassed this guy scooped me!” “I agree there is a degree of contempt from the media. ‘How can these young people do something that we can’t do or we haven’t done?” James states regarding his relationship with the Media’s “Ivy Leauge.”
James’s recent write up in the NYT sheds some light on why he is particularly singled out for establishment vilification. “Muckrakers are hated or loved depending on the targets they choose” he states. Since James chooses targets like government squalor and advertent racism in the Liberal élite, he is enemy #1.
“(James O’Keefe has) a history of releasing deceptively edited videos that ultimately failed.”
“(James O’Keefe’s) record is defined by falsehoods, distortions, and discrediting stunts.”
These are only some of the things the reliable and George Soros avatars at Media Matters have to say about AIM’s most recent interview subject.
To see if Eric Boehlert and his fellow “Senior Fellows” were right, AIM’s Benjamin Johnson sat down with O’Keefe to discuss the efforts of his Project Veritas and why the mainstream media leaves a vacuum that young conservatives like James have to fill.
It’s rare anymore that you read a story where you feel the writer respects both your opinion and their craft enough to allow you your own interpretation. Rarer still when it’s an article published by the New York Times. Most journalists are eager to make names for themselves and in absence of a big story opportunity and due diligence on a piece, they supplant their opinions and suffocate with bias the very thing about which they write.
It isn’t exactly a secret that some Medicaid money winds up in unqualified hands, but it was surprising to see how willingly minor officials turned a blind eye and, in some cases, even offered advice on how to game the system. No money was distributed, but there will be repercussions. The first video was out for only hours before an Ohio state spokesman called it “extremely troubling.” Soon after, it was announced that the Medicaid worker who coached them on how to hide their ownership of an $800,000 automobile had been placed on paid administrative leave. Officials in at least two states immediately began their own investigations.
Had the videos revealed a larger injustice, O’Keefe’s stated goal? Had they demonstrated waste and abuse in Great Society initiatives run amok, or were they simply exposing the failures of some well-meaning, low-level bureaucrats in a basically worthy government program? It depends on your perspective. As for James O’Keefe, he is already looking for the next target.
I have to go cleanse my palette by watching a legitimate interview carried off by someone who doesn’t get the vapors, like Chris Wallace or even Chris Matthews. Lefty Nicole Sandler begins hysterically by starting off with a straw man similar to “how often do you beat your wife?”
In a news item that’s worth mentioning but should shock exactly no one, Vivian Schiller, the ex-NPR CEO who was ousted over the James O’Keefe video string from earlier this year has been hired by NBC News.
The release from NBC Universal:
New position will oversee the digital strategy for NBC News and MSNBC
NEW YORK, NY—June 2, 2011— Vivian Schiller will be joining NBC News as Chief Digital Officer. The announcement was made today by NBC News President Steve Capus. Schiller’s role is a new position at NBC News, as the network expands its leadership team to add management of its digital platforms. She will join the news division in mid-July.
Reporting to Capus, Schiller will lead the digital strategy for both NBC News and MSNBC to ensure future growth and innovation. Her responsibilities include strategic oversight of the network’s digital extensions on the web and in mobile, interaction with the Joint Venture that oversees the msnbc.com digital network, as well as providing direction to the network’s new emerging properties such as EducationNation.com and theGrio.com.
“Bringing Vivian on board enhances this network’s mission of growth and the evolution of its digital businesses and strategy. With Vivian’s help, NBC News will be recognized as the premier broadcast news organization in America, as well as the most innovative, comprehensive and trusted news operation,” said Steve Capus. “Her background in journalism, combined with expertise in the digital space will add a strong new pillar to the NBC News leadership team.” (more…)
Leftist Crooks and Liars blog launches a disingenuous attack this way today. With Leftist Chicago-like crooks in control of the administration, it’s no surprise that its team of Leftist liars in the blogosphere are still lying, as usual.
Christofanelli wasn’t confessing to anything; he did nothing wrong. The brave young man peeled back the scab of an activist pro-union class dressed up to look like a legitimate bit of secondary education. C&L must have majored in labor studies, obviously they are not well educated, or they would not put confession in quotes in this excerpt. They aren’t quoting anything, but merely making it up to support thier disingenuous narrative.
On my Twitter account, I follow a few hundred mainstream media-types (keep the enemy closer, right?), and unless I've missed it (and I hope I have), not a single one has spoken out in defense of Roland Martin. Not one. How scary is that. The politically correct Groupthink...
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