Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

James O'Keefe Sings and Dances in the Name of Citizen Journalism

"[...]Project Veritas: how fake news prize went to rightwing group beloved by Trump
[...] In response to the Post’s exposé of Project Veritas’ dishonesty, the group released on Tuesday what it claimed was a major investigation into the newspaper’s lies and biases. The worst it could point to .. https://www.projectveritas.com/2017/11/27/breaking-undercover-video-exposes-washington-posts-hidden-agenda/ .. was candid camera footage of a Post reporter wondering whether the paper had devoted too much effort to reporting Hurricane Irma, commenting on how opinionated its opinion pages were, and making the uncontroversial claim that the Wall Street Journal was “very conservative”.
P - The self-inflicted bloody nose suffered by O’Keefe this week may not amount to a turning point in the war over fake news, but it was at least a moment. As Tom Fiedler, dean of Boston University’s college of communication and a former Miami Herald journalist, put it: “This was an opportunity for people who believe in the role of the media, who think there’s a difference between truth and ‘truthiness’, as Stephen Colbert calls it, to pump a fist in the air and say ‘Take that!’”"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/29/project-veritas-how-fake-news-prize-went-to-rightwing-group-beloved-by-trump

The above tells us what we already knew. That the repeated Trump-like claims by Trump-trolls and trolls claiming not to be Trump-trolls on this board that MSM are purveyors of fake news are simply Trump lies. Nothing new there. The MSM may slip occasionally, but are not fake news outlets as Trump and his enablers would have us believe.

After bringing down the CEO of NPR, what do you do for a follow-up act?

By Alex Eichler
April 20, 2011

All links, dud or not

After bringing down the CEO of National Public Radio .. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/03/NPR-ceo-resigns-after-prank-video/35697/ , [ Insert: an oops 503 on that link, so a sub. which explains O'Keefe's dishonesty there ..

NPR: O'Keefe 'Inappropriately Edited' Video; Exec's Words Still 'Egregious'
March 14, 20118:35 AM ET Mark Memmott
[...]NPR's David Folkenflik has done more reporting on the differences between the 11 1/2 minute video that O'Keefe's Project Veritas produced and the two hours worth of video that O'Keefe says is the largely unedited account of a lunch that Schiller and another NPR fundraising executive had with two men posing as representatives of a Muslim group that wanted to donate $5 million to NPR.
[...]Scott Baker, editor in chief of the conservative news site The Blaze, tells David that after watching the two-hour video he came away with the impression that the NPR executives "seem to be fairly balanced people."
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/03/14/134528545/npr-okeefe-inappropriately-edited-video-execs-words-still-egregious ]

what do you do for a follow-up act? If you're conservative wunderkind James O'Keefe, you star in a seven-minute music video with somewhat involved choreography and auto-tuned lyrics about sticking it to the man. Before you check the date on this story, we'll remind you: April Fool's Day was a few weeks ago.

O'Keefe is nothing if not a provocateur. In 2009, he dressed up as a pimp .. [503] .. to seek business advice from ACORN; the following year, he was arrested for trying to enter the offices of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu under false pretenses .. [503] .. ; and a few months ago, he may or may not have tried to fake-seduce a CNN correspondent .. [503] .. on a houseboat filled with sex props. All of which is to say, he's obviously comfortable with being the center of attention.

But this new video, which makes repeated reference to the Landrieu incident (including a dancefloor interlude where O'Keefe puts the moves on a Landrieu impersonator), may not attract the kind of attention O'Keefe wants. Colby Hall at Mediaite writes .. https://www.mediaite.com/online/um-wow-james-okeefe-responds-to-critics-with-hackneyed-music-video-really/ .. that "this video confirms what many likely already thought: James O'Keefe is a delusional attention-seeker whose interest in self-promotion lacks normal (any?) self-awareness." Meanwhile, Wonkette slugs their item about the video as "Things You Can Never Unsee."

O'Keefe was recently the subject of a not-terribly-flattering profile in Playboy (you can see it here, or check out Mediaite's takeaways if you'd rather not have Playboy's cheesecake ads on your screen). And the music video starts off with about two solid minutes of clips of people criticizing O'Keefe. So maybe this video was meant to raise his stock in the public eye.

We're reminded of that time Julian Assange appeared on "Rap News." Everyone took him more seriously after that, right?

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

Alex Eichler is a reporter at The Huffington Post and a former staff writer at The Atlantic Wire.

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2011/04/james-okeefe-sings-and-dances-name-citizen-journalism/349789/