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…)

UPDATE after the jump.

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The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana has filed a court document admitting that James O’Keefe did not intend to tamper with the phones at Mary Landrieu’s office, or commit any other felony.

Oh — and the good folks at the Department of Justice don’t particularly want you to know that. This post reveals that, at O’Keefe’s hearing, the Assistant U.S. Attorney tried not to read that part of the document in court. What’s more, the U.S. Attorney pointedly omitted this critical information from their press release.

The news of the Government’s admission broke yesterday, when Big Journalism’s Larry O’Connor reported that a court document filed in James O’Keefe’s criminal case bearing the title “Final Factual Basis” contains the following language:

In this case, further investigation did not uncover evidence that the defendants intended to commit any felony after the entry by false pretenses despite their initial statements to the staff of Senatorial office and GSA requesting access to the central phone system. Instead, the Government’s evidence would show that the defendants misrepresented themselves and their purpose for gaining access to the central phone system to orchestrate a conversation about phone calls to the Senator’s staff and capture the conversation on video, not to actually tamper with the phone system, or to commit any other felony.

This news, which O’Connor relayed at the end of a post about Media Matters’ dishonesty, is a significant piece of news that deserves its own post. It is especially noteworthy because this paragraph comes from a version of the facts that the Government has agreed to by way of stipulation. The document contains the following language showing the Government’s agreement: (more…)

I wonder if MSNBC can get its money back on that special “Watergate Jr.” graphic and the ominous theme music they used when throwing their resources (and reputations) at James O’Keefe?

The charges against O’Keefe and three other men have been reduced to a misdemeanor offense of entering federal property under false pretenses.  Yes, the extent of their offense is that two of the men dressed up like the construction worker in the Village People and claimed to be phone repairmen.  Call it “Misdemeanor Mischief.”

O’Keefe and his cohorts now get their day in court to defend against these charges, or to negotiate a plea with federal prosecutors.  So, to paraphrase former Labor Secretary Ray Donovan:  Which office does O’Keefe go to get his reputation back? (more…)

Today is the day that I have been invited to go on MSNBC for the very first time.  At no point during the ACORN story was I put on the hot seat to defend the work of James O’Keefe.  My thesis from day one has been that the mainstream media is biased in favor of the left and MSNBC is its most obvious case study.

So when MSNBC led the charge on Tuesday against James O’Keefe when he and three others were arrested in New Orleans at Senator Landrieu’s office, it came as no surprise that the cable network seized upon a narrative that presumed O’Keefe’s guilt, falsely extrapolated that he was being charged with felony wiretapping and instantaneously coined and repeated endlessly the new buzz phase, “Watergate Jr.”

Thus it came as no surprise to me that Keith Olbermann’s super sub, David Shuster, called me early Wednesday.  ”Watergate Jr.” pushed MSNBC to send Shuster down to New Orleans to own the destruction-by-media of James O’Keefe and anyone in his proximity.  I immediately told Shuster that I had been getting emails about his absurd, over-the-top and rush-to-judgment journalism.  He told me that I had him confused with Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, that he has “no horse in this race.”  He asked that I come on his show and that he would give me a fair interview.  He proceeded to send me the following emails to formalize the request.  See below (emphasis mine):

As you see, Shuster is attempting to lure me into this story based upon the false premise of his objective neutrality.  Notice he says, “As I said, I don’t have a horse in this race.”  A simple Google search of David Shuster and James O’Keefe immediately finds that Shuster went into a Twitter frenzy to tar and feather James O’Keefe and propagated what are now provably false lies about the Landrieu case.

See below:
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