Still perpetrating hoaxes for the conservative cause.
If there is never a price to be paid for dishonesty, then our politics are going to remain dishonest. That much is clear as conservative serial video faker James O'Keefe and his group continue to get coverage for their "gotcha" footage of non-conservatives they don't like doing "things" they later edit to make look corrupt or illegal. O'Keefe has been continually exposed as doing just that, and has settled lawsuits over it, and was convicted of criminal activity in one particular attempt to do it. And yet it's been a long time since I've seen a piece as slavishly gullible as the latest
New York Times piece on his supposed efforts. It was originally titled
"James O’Keefe, a political sleuth, to stalk campaigns for wrongdoing," but was soon changed to an only slightly less dishonest headline. Nonetheless, if you didn't already know that the aforementioned James O'Keefe was (1) a conservative ideologue who (2) was
widely and commonly known for faking stories in an effort to sabotage the names of his political opponents, you weren't going to learn it
from the New York Times.
Presidential campaigns were put on notice on Tuesday that the stakes will be higher in this election cycle as Project Veritas Action, a research team that uses undercover investigators, warned that it was stepping up its stalking.
There are several problems in that solitary sentence. For starters, it's difficult to call them a "research" team, since they do almost no meaningful research. Next, "undercover investigations" is a bit much since, as we have discussed, what they do is not
investigate so much as
fabricate. As one example, recall the time O'Keefe and his team
attempted to bring Democratic campaign material into a nonprofit Colorado get-out-the-vote group so that he could release footage of the group supposedly "coordinating" with that campaign. That's not an "investigation," that's faking a story outright. There are no mitigating circumstances there, and if the editors of the
New York Times or any other paper still abide attaching the label "researcher" or "investigator" or "journalist" to a group that has been caught in such fabrications
repeatedly then perhaps readers should be treating the
New York Times' own journalism with more skepticism.
Finally, presidential campaigns aren't "on notice" that O'Keefe is stalking them. James O'Keefe's group has an easily looked-up track record: It is funded by conservatives, it is promoted by conservatives, it is staffed by conservatives, and it exclusively targets groups perceived to be election-time enemies of conservatives. There's only one presidential campaign he's stalking, and that's whoever the current Democratic frontrunner is. The Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, and-so-on-and-so-on campaigns have not a damn thing to worry about, and you and I and they and the New York Times, I would hope, all know this.
In fact, the word "conservative" does not appear anywhere in the New York Times story. Keep reading for more.
We learn that O'Keefe considers his team to be "an investigative SEAL Team Six." We learn that O'Keefe spent his own press conference "claiming to be not partisan," thus apparently foiling any New York Times effort to point out that his group is, in fact, specifically and identifiably partisan and has been so during every one of their "investigations" to date. But we don't learn that James O'Keefe and his "research team that uses undercover investigations" is, in fact, a conservative-backed, conservative-staffed group that explicitly selects liberal-leaning and only liberal-leaning targets. We don't learn that they specifically focus on tight Democratic races, volunteer get-out-the-vote efforts, and (especially) volunteer get-out-the-vote efforts aimed at poor or minority voters.
No, despite James O'Keefe being in this racket for years now and being repeatedly exposed for faking or attempting to fake the results of his "investigations," that part somehow falls by the wayside.
We do learn, however, that he believes his new tape of an "undercover" operative overhearing a conversation in which a Canadian tourist wants to buy Hillary Clinton memorabilia and is turned down because non-citizens can't do that (upon which the conservative camera-holder valiantly offers to buy the memorabilia on her behalf,) is meant to show "a willingness by the campaign to skirt laws." We even get a paragraph explaining that "foreign donations are a sensitive subject for the Clintons," in an apparent attempt to explain why O'Keefe believes this obviously ridiculous non-story ought to be looked at through a non-ridiculous lens.
The whole story, in fact, is interspersed with strong hints that things may not be as they seem. We are at least told of O'Keefe settling a lawsuit filed against him for one of his earlier fake "stings," though we are not told what O'Keefe did, specifically, to bring on that lawsuit. We are told of his criminal conviction after an apparent attempt to plant a bug in former Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's Louisiana office, though both the "Democratic" and "bug" parts are skipped over. And we are allowed to hear the incredulousness of other reporters, as they listen to the known fabricator of past stories explain why this new story is worth the price of the coffee it took to keep them awake during his event:
Although campaign finance violations are a serious issue, Mr. O’Keefe’s presentation drew some snickers from the reporters that Project Veritas had convened for the event. He struggled to justify breaking laws and using fake names to find wrongdoing, and at one point Mr. O’Keefe was asked pointedly, “Is this a joke?”
Brushing the question off as ridicule, Mr. O’Keefe maintained [...]
But if readers are to conclude, correctly, that James O'Keefe is a conservative ideologue with a long history of explicitly faking stories in an effort to sabotage political opponents, they're going to have to read between the lines. The
New York Times goes to great effort to promote the known hoaxer as a legitimate political voice, albeit one tarnished with past "legal problems" and who might draw "snickers."
This is, to put it bluntly, ridiculous. What is the point of promoting the work of a known manufacturer of fraudulent stories, without pointing out that he is known for manufacturing fraudulent stories? What is the point of reporting on a transparently ideological group of conservative muckrakers who claim they will be targeting presidential campaigns in a nonpartisan fashion, but not reporting that they are in fact transparently ideological and that the subjects of each of their past "investigations" have been ideological enemies?
Is this an effort to appear balanced, by treating the source of a steady stream of journalistic hoaxes as equivalent to any other organization's legitimate efforts?
Is this an effort by a reporter who never once before heard of James O'Keefe, edited by a New York Times editor who also couldn't place the name?
What value does this piece bring to New York Times readers? What is the point, aside from offering continuing legitimacy to a group that should have been shunned after their first hoax was exposed, or at least after their third or fourth or fifth one was? Are readers supposed to come away with the impression that a conservative journalist buying a Clinton t-shirt on behalf of a Canadian could somehow become a political scandal or demonstrate something sinister about O'Keefe's ideological enemies, despite the obvious lunacy of that proposition?
Is this a joke?
There's no point in a retraction, or even in editing the story to be marginally less gullible at this point—and that's not the issue here. The issue is that America's top news platforms continue to give the time of day to a promoter of journalistic hoaxes. That known hoax-promoters should be avoided as credible sources of news should go without saying. There's no debate to be had here. Are we thinking that even after a half-dozen examples of a group promoting faked work, which was proven fake, that by gum we still ought to take their next dozen attempts seriously just in case? Is there any other line of work in which you can fake the product of your supposed job for years, be exposed, and have it matter as little as it seems to matter in the business of professional journalism?
If a man calls into a newsroom claiming to have a photo of a 1,500 meter-high Persian cat towering menacingly over the Chicago skyline, and upon inspection the cat was affixed to the photograph with the aid of scissors and a glue stick, and the same man calls into the newsroom a dozen more times with variations of that same story—different cities, different animals, same glue stick—at what point does the newsroom stop fielding his calls? More to the point, at what point does the newsroom stop publishing his pictures in articles noting that critics are skeptical of his claims, but it's just not for journalists to make conclusions one way or the other?
This is ridiculous. It's long past time that the New York Times and other papers of record commit themselves to, at the very least, not promoting the work of known hoaxers. It is true that hoaxes, when heavily promoted as the truth by ideologues keen on sabotaging political opponents as well as news outlets too timid to point out the glaring flaws, can have considerable effect on our political discourse and on the groups ideologically targeted. And, golly, perhaps hoaxes sell a few papers, too. But should hoaxes have such effects? And is the Times comfortable with playing a key role in the public promotion of those hoaxes, time and time again, by the very same actors who pushed falsehoods on their readers the last dozen times?
To publish a story about James O'Keefe and his band of tape-editing, crime-committing, prop-wielding, hoax distributors without noting once a salient feature of all his past stories—that they were proven factually wrong—is not much better than O'Keefish journalism itself. The New York Times, of all places, should fashion itself as a paper that exposes journalistic corruption, not one that breezily helps to perpetrate it.