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…)

James O’Keefe turns his hidden camera from ACORN to the Census. Tune in at 7:30 EDT.

“CBS, 60 Minutes — they built their careers on this. So, that’s the tradition I’m following in sort of a new age journalism.”

Careful, Mr O’Keefe ! Don’t go there! Nothing in the FBI affidavit even hints that you brushed with the type of swinishness and ethical squalor 60 Minutes was capable of, especially on April 16, 2000.

I’ll report. Y’all decide:

On April 16, 2000, viewers of CBS’ 60 Minutes saw Dan Rather interviewing Elian Gonzalez’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. America saw a bewildered and heartsick father simply pleading to be allowed to have his motherless son accompany him back to Cuba, his cherished homeland. How could anyone oppose this? How could simple decency and common sense possibly allow for anything else?

“Did you cry?” the pained and frowning Dan Rather asked the “bereaved” father during the 60 Minutes drama.“A father never runs out of tears,” Juan (actually, the voice of Juan’s drama school-trained translator) sniffled back to Dan. And the 60 Minutes prime-time audience could hardly contain their own sniffles.

Here’s what America didn’t see: (more…)

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

“It’s journalism malpractice”

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…)

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.

James O’Keefe still gets my vote for investigative journalist of the year.  Teaming with Hannah Giles to expose illegal and immoral tactics deep in the ACORN shakedown operation was brilliant.  Now, O’Keefe has one-upped himself with his exposure of an MSM drowning in its own leftist ideology.

American journalists once cheered for those among their own who were brave enough to risk jail in the quest of exposing corruption and malfeasance.  Yet when O’Keefe and his band of whippersnapper journalists went undercover, disguised as telephone repairmen in the hopes of exposing Senator Landrieu’s denying her own constituents phone access to her, the MSM fell all over themselves denouncing the young men.

Rush to judgment?  No.  It was a stampede.

From MSNBC, CBS, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Talking Points Memo and others came shrill, utterly false headlines about “attempted bugging” and the “new Watergate,” which are now being corrected or retracted with but a faint whisper.  MSM “journalists” in high-and-mighty places haven’t had this much egg on their faces since their coffee-klatch therapy sessions over the misunderstood, “non-jihadist” Ft. Hood terror attack.

Bravo Mr. O’Keefe, honey! (more…)

Update 1/30: The Associated Press has removed the video highlighted below.  While we thank the AP for taking the video down, we request they also scrub the headline “Suspects in Landrieu Break-in Appear in Court” from Associated Press pages and channels.  Additionally, we request the AP issue a formal correction for posting this video and headline.

In the above Associated Press video, which is posted to the Associated Press YouTube Channel, “Suspects in Landrieu Break-in Appear in Court “of January 28th, 2010, the Associated Press makes an unverifiable claim that James O’Keefe and the three other conservative activists broke-in to the offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu. First in the headline, then in the audio:

Three of the four men charged with breaking in to Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu’s office…

The description of the video as it appears on YouTube also references a break-in:

Three of the four men charged with breaking into Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans office appeared in court Wednesday. (Jan. 28)

There are no allegations of a “break-in” in the FBI affidavit and Mr. O’Keefe has gone on record denying claims that he broke in to 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, and Talking Points Memo already have posted corrections or retractions.