Sorry if I seem a little obsessive about James O’Keefe, but this kind of crap really bothers me. The NY Times published a piece yesterday titled “Partisans Adopt Deceit as a Tactic for Reports” which included a nice big photo of James O’Keefe. What does it not include? Any mention of the fact that O’Keefe has doctored every piece of video he’s ever released.
False equivalency abounds in this article–the reporter, Jeremy Peters, compares O’Keefe’s deceitful work with the prank phone call that Ian Murphy (unnamed in the piece) made to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Why is this a false comparison? Because Murphy released uncut audio of his conversation and never misrepresented what Walker had said. O’Keefe, on the other hand, has never done that, whether we’re talking about the ACORN videos, the Planned Parenthood “sting” or the recent NPR uncontroversial controversy. The first is an example of a reporter using deceit to get a source to open up. The second is a case of a person perpetrating a fraud on the public at large.
We can argue all day long whether what Murphy did was ethical, but there’s no question about O’Keefe. He’s a proven liar and nothing he says should be trusted, even if–especially if–it’s on video.
