In late 2009 and early 2010, right-wing activist James O’Keefe concocted a story that got widespread media coverage. The tall tale went like this: O’Keefe and his associate went to offices affiliated with the community organizing group ACORN in order to solicit advice on running a brothel and evading taxes. The problem was that nothing much like that actually happened. As FAIR summarized (Action Alert, 3/11/10):
O’Keefe never dressed as a pimp during his visits to ACORN offices, seems to never actually represent himself as a “pimp,” and the advice he solicits is usually about how to file income taxes (which is not “tax evasion”). In at least one encounter (at a Baltimore ACORN office), the pair seemed to first insist that Giles was a dancer, not a prostitute.
The upshot: O’Keefe misrepresented his exploits, released selectively edited videos, and the press fell for it. In fact, the ombud at the Washington Post and the public editor at the New York Times chided their respective papers for not giving the bogus “scandal” more attention. (Eventually, the Times would admit some of its ACORN errors, thanks to FAIR activists and blogger Brad Friedman.)
So it felt a little odd to see this headline in the New York Times today (2/2/11):
Group Releases Hidden Tapes of Planned Parenthood
The lead:
An anti-abortion group seeking to discredit Planned Parenthood released an undercover video on Tuesday that appears to show a clinic manager advising a sex trafficker how to get medical care for prostitutes as young as 14.
So this raises the question: Will these outlets learn to treat right-wing hidden camera exploits more skeptically–or maybe decide that they’re not news at all? This Times account suggests that they have already forgotten what they learned last time:
The video resembles those made in 2009 by a conservative activist, James O’Keefe, in which employees of the community group Acorn appeared to advise a prostitution ring how to avoid taxes.
At the Washington Post, under the headline “Anti-Abortion Group Releases Planned Parenthood Sting Video,” readers are told:
A group seeking to discredit Planned Parenthood released a video Tuesday that depicts two hired actors posing as a pimp and a prostitute seeking services at a New Jersey clinic, in an operation resembling one that helped take down a liberal anti-poverty group two years ago.
If by “resembles,” the Post means that this current video is getting more attention than it deserves, then, yes, there is a distinct similarity. A more reasonable write-up of the current “sting” came courtesy of Alex Pareene at Salon.com (2/1/11), who wrote that the plan
didn’t really work, because Planned Parenthood quickly caught on and alerted the FBI. (BigJournalism.com exclusive: Planned Parenthood alerts the authorities when confronted by self-proclaimed human traffickers!) Planned Parenthood suspected that the hoaxer had ties to Live Action, an antiabortion activist group run by Lila Rose, a sometime O’Keefe partner-in-undercover-stinging. And Live Action confirmed its involvement by posting the sad results of its exhaustive video investigation today. It caught one staffer possibly advising a make-believe pimp to send a make-believe underage prostitute somewhere where her abortion would not be reported. (It is obviously impossible to tell what actually happened without the unedited video.) (And also this Planned Parenthood alerted the authorities about the weird visit.)
Pareene points out:
These conservative undercover “hoaxes” are best understood as an attempt to make their fantasies real. In order to make animate the world that they feverishly imagine, they must themselves become the unsavory characters with bad motivations that they enjoy thinking populate these hotbeds of degenerate liberal activity.
The corporate media problem here is quite serious, since there is a deep-seated feeling that what right-wing activists do should get more coverage, to make up for the nonexistent liberal bias in the mainstream media. This sensibility creates the media “appetite” for the ACORN hoax, the Shirley Sherrod hoax, and on and on.
At this point, it’s not a question of media “falling” for this stuff, but being eager to act as a megaphone for these right-wing fantasies.
Peter, it’s not a matter of the corpress “learning” anything here, is it?
They know damn good and well what’s going on, and as you say, they’re eager to aid and abet.
Meanwhile, actual news about evil deeds, such as the WikiLeaks revelations, is ignored, skewed or treated as itself criminal.
That’s the work of a system with no interest in getting to the facts, not one clueless as to how to do so, don’t you think?
That’s right, Doug. But there’s one other thing to consider here. As all sychophantic “journalists” know, the only thing worse than being considered a toady, or a propagandist, or a an out-right paid liar, is to be considered a “liberal sympathiser,” or just a plain old liberal. One must always treat even the biggest Right-wing liars and sociopaths with respect, elsewise they may out you as a lib-symp. And that’s bad for business.
Who runs/owns the M.S.M. in the U.S.? There’s your answer. No need to dig it out, the failures are due to dumbing down the viewers.
It’s dismal that media ethics don’t require transparency on PR news wires; which is where the papers probably found it.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/frc-action-to-host-webcast-tonight-featuring-live-actions-shocking-undercover-video-investigation-of-planned-parenthood-115188354.html
Saw the tape.Looks pretty damn open and shut just like ACORN.But If it was just a crooked, stupid nurse so be it.If this is endemic in planned parenthood then they need to fix it.I think Mr O’keefe and the rest capturing these embarrassments to left wing bedrock programs should hand them over to Mr Assange.I trust he would release them, and you-all would feel they were being handled by an expert….. case closed!…………………..In a pigs eye :)
Hmmm . . . so a lying sociopath essentially re-makes another propaganda piece, and still the Media throws itself down in humble respect before him? O’Keefe is the unsmiling, lunatic face of the modern Right-wing media–liying, cheating, and stealing are their yeoman work ethic, suspended and held aloft by barely contained racism and the ever-present urge (an uncontrollable urge) to totalitarianism.
Why aren’t you emphasizing that those who represent themselves as pimps and prostitutes are hired, being paid by, and in the employ of the right wing fanatics. If Republicans are happy bringing such people to Planned Parenthood , why spend a word writing about anyone other than the dirty trick right wingers.
The news is not about Planned Parenthood, but about those who attack it with dirty tricks.
And the news is not about US …. it is about those who attack it(Mr Assange)with dirty tricks(theft of documents or collusion to same.Pa- lease.
Remember Delorian getting caught with a case full of coke in a police sting.Yeah it is always the dirty cops entrapping the poor innocent slobs.Jerry caught red handed is red handed.I remember when the Phila mob was taken down by undercover agents.Who were accused of being dirty themselves!Not working Jerry.They are on tape doing wrong.Period…… exclamation point…..end of sentence.
You see a tape of your daughter being attacked on the street ..Are you really gonna check to see the character of the guy who caught it on tape as the prime factor in the case.Or you going after the crooks?
Planned Parenthood was visited by the dirty tricksters at multiple locations and informed the FBI in late January, even though the orginazation was almost certain that the people were attempting to set them up in an O’Keefe style sting.
Informed there was a sting operation…and still they could not keep from getting into trouble?Truly revealing.I did not think it was that bad.
Maybe I’m missing something here, because the basic message I get in the NYT and WaPo articles cited is “Here we go again with a right-wing sting operation that the targeted group appropriately reported to the FBI as possible human trafficking.” Both articles made it clear that the video was made with the express intent of discrediting Planned Parenthood, and in no way seem to jump on that bandwagon. No, they don’t jump up and down shrieking “Bad conservatives!”, but their repeated use of the word “appeared” in describing the videos, and their referencing a known falsification (O’Keefe’s video) indicates a healthy scepticism to me.
Deb not following your take on this.
You’re suprised that the Corporate Media favors rightwing “reporting and or/video crap”?
Well then, let me sell you a span on the Bay Bridge.
My point was, of course, that the organization had done the right thing. The sting videos caught a few poorly trained employees. This doesn’t indicate that things were “that bad” at PP anymore than claiming the Target is utterly hopeless based on the behavior of someone behaving badly while manning the customer service desk.
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