Just like in Watergate, where the initial players tried to write-off the scandal as a “third-rate break-in,” the bigger story lies in the power wielded by executives trying desperately to cover their tracks and pretend they didn’t do something extraordinarily odious.  We are witnessing a cover-up.  An effort designed to disguise the fact that National Public Radio was very seriously intending to receive an anonymous donation from a front group dedicated to spreading Sharia around the world and was associated with a known terrorist organization.

As the old Washington cliché goes, it’s not the original crime that gets you in trouble, it’s the cover-up.  And so it goes for NPR’s response to Project Veritas’ blockbuster investigative report that has already resulted in the ouster of the two top executives at the publicly-funded broadcast network.

NPR’s immediate response, as reported by their own reporter, David Folkenflik was:

The fraudulent organization represented in this video repeatedly pressed us to accept a $5 million check, with no strings attached, which we repeatedly refused to accept.

This bit of damage control was repeated in just about every piece of main stream coverage on the scandal.  Big Journalism pointed out on the day the scandal broke, that NPR’s subsequent statements insisting that they suspected something fishy with the group as they continued their vetting process (even as recently as last week) proves that their initial insistence that they had repeatedly refused the donation offered by a Muslim Brotherhood front group was patently false and proved that the pubic was not getting the full truth about NPR’s behavior.  Why did NPR continue to vet a group that they repeatedly refused a donation from? (more…)

Things were going so well for David Shuster at the start of the year. On January 26, James O’Keefe, chief ACORN-buster, and several of his friends had just been arrested for “breaking into” the office of Senator Mary Landrieu. The MSM sharks started circling. Blood was in the water. Cries of “Watergate, Jr.” reverberated throughout the vast MSM echo chamber, led by the king reverberator himself, David Shuster, in this whole overblown non-scandal.

For a refresher course in MSM diversion and moral equivalence, watch Shuster bend over backwards, Cirque-du-Soleil style, to defend ACORN while simultaneously all-but-convicting O’Keefe of felony burglary. Shuster claims in the Breitbart video that “O’Keefe wanted to shame Senator Mary Landrieu.” Yes, Dave. He wanted to. But she’d already beaten him to it.

At the time of the real Watergate scandal, Shuster was just out of kindergarten. Perhaps this explains his first-grade level of skepticism of politicians. It makes one wonder: where did the man get his B.A. from–  the Kumbaya School of Communications? Yesterday, O’Keefe pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in the Landrieu event. End of non-story. (more…)

James O’Keefe pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor today for his guerrilla-reporting stunt last January in the New Orleans offices of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu.  The charge that he has admitted to, “entering federal property under false pretenses,” is a far cry from the phone-bugging and Watergate Jr. distortions first screamed by the MSM in high-octane hyperventilation mode when the story first broke in January.

MSNBC devoted the top slot in each of its prime time shows to the story and created a special “Watergate Jr.” graphic, and Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann each took their turn at the James O’Keefe piñata, whacking away with full faith in the yummy morsels they expected to come tumbling out.

The big problem was that everything they “reported” to their viewers was based on pure conjecture and wishful thinking.  If they had spent ten minutes reading the initial report from the federal investigators they would have seen that there was never an allegation of wire-tapping or bugging.  But the facts, readily available to any journalist curious enough to find the truth, didn’t stand in their way of wall-to-wall “Watergate, Jr.” coverage. It was a typically disgraceful performance by the leftist American media.

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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.

There’s a concept, often applied to intelligence operations, called “mirror thinking.” This refers to the assumption that everyone else acts in the same way you would and is motivated by the same things that would motivate you. When the old media rushed to judge James O’Keefe after he was arrested outside of Senator Landrieu’s office, the “spying” allegations and “Watergate Jr.” label seemed to say more about the reporters covering the story than it did about the protagonist in this alleged drama.

When the Landrieu story broke, my immediate reaction was: “O’Keefe is yanking somebody’s chain again.” Andrew’s post seemed to confirm that assumption, and now comes O’Keefe’s statement that confirms it.  It will be fascinating to see how this all plays out.

But, the reaction in the old media was quite different and most revealing. Journalists saw somebody arrested who is a part of a political movement they don’t care for and quickly applied mirror thinking. What was O’Keefe up to? It had to be something sneaky and nasty, because that’s what they do to embarrass their political opponents. (Just ask Sarah Palin). But – hah-hah! – the kid took it too far. Gotcha!

Perhaps the old media could learn a lesson from Felix Unger: (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.

The government has now confirmed what has always been clear:  No one tried to wiretap or bug Senator Landrieu’s office.  Nor did we try to cut or shut down her phone lines.  Reports to this effect over the past 48 hours are inaccurate and false.

As an investigative journalist, my goal is to expose corruption and lack of concern for citizens by government and other institutions, as I did last year when our investigations revealed the massive corruption and fraud perpetrated by ACORN.  For decades, investigative journalists have used a variety of tactics to try to dig out and reveal the truth.

I learned from a number of sources that many of Senator Landrieu’s constituents were having trouble getting through to her office to tell her that they didn’t want her taking millions of federal dollars in exchange for her vote on the healthcare bill.  When asked about this, Senator Landrieu’s explanation was that, “Our lines have been jammed for weeks.”  I decided to investigate why a representative of the people would be out of touch with her constituents for “weeks” because her phones were broken.  In investigating this matter, we decided to visit Senator Landrieu’s district office – the people’s office – to ask the staff if their phones were working. (more…)

In your editorial “James O’Keefe’s Latest Caper” of January 26th, 2010, the incident involving James O’Keefe at Sen. Landrieu’s office earlier this week is referred to as a ”bugging scandal,” which is likened to Watergate:

Filmmaker James O’Keefe III is 25, meaning he was born about 13 years after five men were arrested for trying to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex in Washington. The subsequent scandal, which led to the resignation of the burglars’ boss, President Richard M. Nixon, was fodder for history books by the time O’Keefe was old enough to read them. Chances are, he didn’t.

O’Keefe, the Internet “journalist” who became an overnight sensation after his undercover reports revealed unethical behavior by the liberal activist group ACORN, now finds himself in the middle of his own bugging scandal.

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 tap phones in the Senator’s office.

This is substantial evidence to refute your claim that O’Keefe “finds himself in the middle of his own bugging scandal.” 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 and MSNBC’s David Shuster, already have posted corrections or retractions.

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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Think press malpractice when, in political matters, you hear prosecutorial malpractice.

Indictments by the Justice Department against five former security guards for Xe, the private-security firm and military contractor formerly known as Blackwater, were recently jettisoned by a D.C. district judge in what seems to be, as the Wall Street Journal observes, “another instance of gross prosecutorial misconduct, as abusive Justice lawyers went after an unsympathetic political target.”

The guards were involved in a shootout in Iraq that killed some Iraqis and generated much anti-American feeling. The government maintains that the men went on an unprovoked murderous rampage, whereas the guards claim they responded in self-defense to a lethal threat. The complex, 90-page opinion of the judge who dismissed the charges compellingly reveals ongoing willful and irresponsible actions on the part of prosecutors. In short, he ruled that the government, in shaping its case, had violated the defendants’ Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination by “recklessly” using statements compelled under the threat of job loss.

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