Above: From Hardball, people carrying signs in the background include someone with a sign for Project Veritas.
You may have seen these too: someone carrying a sign saying “Project Veritas” over the shoulders of MSNBC commentators when that are outdoors reporting on the sites of the debates. Sometimes it takes a little work to get around a group or organizations own web pages to get the scoop on who they really are.
To save you clicking on their website, let me tell you that what is currently features on their website is their claim of full of “proof” that the Democrats are rigging the election.
Fortunately there’s a website called Sourcewatch, run by the legitimate and respected Center for Media and Democracy:
The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) publishes SourceWatch, this collaborative, specialized encyclopedia of the people, organizations, and issues shaping the public agenda. SourceWatch profiles the activities of front groups, PR spinners, industry-friendly experts, industry-funded organizations, and think tanks trying to manipulate public opinion on behalf of corporations or government. We also highlight key public policies they are trying to affect and provide ways to get involved. In addition, SourceWatch contains information about others who help document information about PR spin, such as reporters, academics, and watchdog groups. Launched in 2003, SourceWatch now has 72,246 articles, as of today, thanks to interested contributors like you, and over six million new visitors to its pages a year and many returning visitors who rely on our articles regularly.
Thanks to their well researched and footnoted article we now know that Project Veritas is the brainchild of “ James O'Keefe, a right-wing provocateur known for a series of deceptive videos attacking targets like Planned Parenthood and ACORN, a community organizing group.”
Sourcewatch’s pages mimic the layout of Wikipedia, and the numerous other Wikis. This has proved to be a good format because by now it is so familiar and easy to read and navigate.
Here’s what they have to say about Project Veritas.
Snopes just put a timely very long and detailed article online about Project Veritas. It has four of their videos.
It ends as follow:
Project Veritas' October 2016 election-related sting videos (embedded above) reveal tidbits of selectively and (likely deceptively edited) footage absent of any context in which to evaluate them. Unless his organization releases the footage in full, undertaking a fair assessment of their veracity is all but impossible.
Last year Mother Jones had an excellent expose on James O’Keefe:
James O'Keefe, the conservative provocateur, has been on the prowl in Colorado, the setting of a close Senate race between Democratic incumbent Mark Udall and GOP Rep. Cory Gardner, as well as a nip-and-tuck governor's contest. Last week, O'Keefe and two of his collaborators tried to bait Democratic field staffers into approving voter fraud involving Colorado's universal vote-by-mail program, according to three Democratic staffers who interacted with O'Keefe or his colleagues.
Democratic staffers in Colorado recently came to believe they were the subject of an O'Keefe operation after campaign workers became suspicious about would-be volunteers who had asked about filling out and submitting mail-in ballots for others. Recently, the 30-year-old O'Keefe has targeted the Senate campaigns of Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor and Kentucky Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes by filming undercover videos of staffers or the candidate.
More stories from the MoJo archive on James O'Keefe:
So, now you know.
