In the New Jersey Star-Ledger editorial “Gov. Christie shouldn’t cozy up to muckraker of ‘Teachers Union Gone Wild’” published today, October 29, 2010, the editorial board falsely reported that James O’Keefe plead guilty to “tampering” with phones in the offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu:

In the article “O’Keefe: ‘I’d do it again’,” published June 1st on CNN’s “Political Ticker,” it is alleged that James O’Keefe and three activist colleagues attempted to tamper with the phones in Sen. Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans offices:

The conservative videographer who plead guilty to entering federal property under false pretenses following an attempt to tamper with Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office phone system says that if given the chance, he’d do it again.

O’Keefe and company pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor crime of entering a federal building under false pretenses. As Patterico pointed out in a similar correction request to New York Magazine issued last week, “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.”

We kindly ask CNN to issue a formal correction.

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…)

In an article published May 28th at CBSNews.com by Carlin DeGuerin Miller, it is twice alleged that James O’Keefe and three activist colleagues plead guilty to attempting to tamper with the phones in Sen. Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans offices.  First, in the headline:

“James O’Keefe and Co. Plead Guilty to Tampering with Senator’s Phones”

And again in the body of the article:

O’Keefe and three  cohorts pleaded guilty Wednesday to dressing up as telephone repairmen in order to tamper with the phones in Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-La.) office.

O’Keefe and company pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor crime of entering a federal building under false pretenses.  As Patterico pointed out in a similar correction request to New York Magazine issued yesterday, “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.”

We kindly ask CBS News to issue a formal correction.

In the New Jersey Star-Ledger Continuous News Desk post “James O’Keefe, three others plead guilty in New Orleans senator phone prank” of May 26th, 2010, the writer says that James O’Keefe and three other conservative activists attempted to “wiretap” the offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu:

O’Keefe, known for his stunt with ACORN while posing as a pimp, was involved in a scheme where two activists posed as telephone repairmen as they entered the office, attempting to wiretap it.

O’Keefe and company pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of entering federal property under false pretenses.  There were never any allegations of a wiretap plot in the FBI affidavit and a law enforcement official conceded months ago that the four men were not attempting to wiretap or intercept calls.  Despite all that, the reporter from the Star-Ledger makes a definitive and erroneous claim that the activists attempted to wiretap Landrieu’s phones.  What’s more, legal representation for the accused went on record in January, 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 four months ago.  We advise the Star-Ledger and its reporters to bring themselves up to speed on this story before they report on it further.

We respectfully ask the New Jersey Star-Ledger to issue a correction/retraction.

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.

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…)

From NPR’s “All Things Considered”:

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Conservative Blogger Faces Criticism Over Protege, by DAVID FOLKENFLIK

The conservative online news entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart is, for the moment, doing little to dispel stereotypes about bloggers. During a recent visit to his home on the west side of Los Angeles, Breitbart, 41, is working from his own basement. Barefoot. At the beck and call of his own kids.

But that basement is light and airy, with a decent view of the city. A young assistant works there with Breitbart to help funnel wire service stories to Breitbart.com, his main news aggregation site. And his reach, thanks to a brawling rhetorical style and a protege who taped the undercover ACORN videos last year, is only expanding.

Over the past year, Breitbart has hired editors to run a new network of conservative blogs called BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com and BigJournalism.com. No matter the focus, the media are a prime target throughout. (more…)

Tonight on “Hannity,” James O’Keefe gave his first public interview since his arrest in New Orleans:

“It’s journalism malpractice”

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.

From FoxNews.com:

James O’Keefe, accused of trying to tamper with the phones of Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, was “framed” by the media and the U.S. attorney’s office, Andrew Breitbart, publisher of BigGovernment.com, told Fox News Monday.

The same day the man who first published James O’Keefe’s explosive videos exposing wrongdoing at community organizer ACORN came to his defense Monday, claiming the conservative filmmaker “sat in jail for 28 hours without access to an attorney” while the prosecutor made his case to the media, the U.S. attorney involved stepped down.

O’Keefe, accused of trying to tamper with the phones of Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, was “framed” by the media and the U.S. attorney’s office, Andrew Breitbart, publisher of BigGovernment.com, told Fox News Monday.

Hours later, Jim Letten, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, recused himself from the case.

The Department of Justice announced the change in a news release Monday night, but did not say why Letten wanted off the case. (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.

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.

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…)

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.