Politics

Fighting Irish activist seeks to upend mainstream media

Robert Spoerl Contributor
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Champions call him a muckraking journalist. Critics say he’s an unethical trickster. Love him or hate him, conservative-leaning investigative filmmaker James O’Keefe, 26, creates content that attracts buzz.

He’s behind the undercover video of an NPR official taking potshots at the Tea Party that helped trigger the resignation of two NPR executives in March. Earlier, O’Keefe exposed corruption in the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which led to the federal government cutting off funding for the now-defunct group.

He also produced an undercover video about a New Jersey Teachers’ Union conference, stylized to imitate the raunchy “Girls Gone Wild” series. More recently, O’Keefe helped produce a video about corruption in Medicaid offices that has prompted an official investigation.

In 2010, he went too far in a federal building. He pleaded guilty, along with several partners, to misdemeanor charges after posing as telephone repairmen to gain access into Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office. O’Keefe is on three years’ probation for the incident.

His undercover work has received widespread attention — from coverage on ABC News to usage in a “Daily Show” segment and a recent article in The New York Times — but many media experts scoff at O’Keefe for taking people’s words out of context and creating narratives that expose only the most damning information.

“Maybe someday O’Keefe’s private choices might be rolled out and subjected to the same relentless scrutiny he shines on others with an almost scary lack of awareness of possible human consequences,” said Steve Gorelick, media professor at Hunter College in New York.

“Until then, I only wish O’Keefe would proceed with at least some humility about the fragility of human nature and the struggle of many people to think and act coherently in a hurried moment,” Gorelick added.

In his college days at Rutgers University, O’Keefe and several other Irish-American students went into the diversity office to protest against Lucky Charms cereal, saying the leprechaun on the box misrepresented their ethnic heritage. They were making a political statement about what they saw as the ridiculous demands of political correctness. Rutgers took the group seriously and banned the cereal for a week.

O’Keefe now publishes his work with Project Veritas, a nonprofit he runs. He refers to himself as a “community organizer” of citizen journalists, a jab at President Barack Obama’s pre-public office career.

One thing O’Keefe prides himself on is posting raw, unedited video after releasing the edited stories that make him popular and controversial. In that vein, here are some unedited comments from the self-described muckraker; he discusses his philosophy, his agenda, and his gripe with traditional media.

The Daily Caller: Who or what motivates you to do the investigative work you do?

James O’Keefe: Injustice in society, imbalance in society and a lack of media not doing the job. A lot of people come to me telling me they’re passionate about exposing certain things, and I want to train them to do it.

TheDC: Why should people of all political beliefs trust you?

O’Keefe: Because the footage speaks for itself and because I’ve released the full uncut, unedited footage. And it has prompted government reaction. The New York Times Magazine did a great piece the other day where they went through all the unedited tapes and said nothing is taken out of context. The president and Congress have reacted. Everyone who has seen these videos is outraged by them.

TheDC: Are you a journalist, an activist, or both?

O’Keefe: It doesn’t really matter what you label it; it is exposing things for what they are. That’s what it is. I think that most journalists today are either pundits or stenographers. They don’t actually do digging. They don’t actually do muckraking. So I think journalism probably defines what we do.

TheDC: Do you think it’s possible for someone who has been trained in a journalism school to go out and do the work you’re doing?

O’Keefe: I don’t think they teach this in journalism school. I’ve experienced a guy at [New York University], Jay something or other, who, all he does is criticize me. [O’Keefe’s talking about Jay Rosen.] My response to him the other day on Twitter was “Professor, what does it say about your profession that it takes 22-year-olds to launch multiple Medicaid investigations in Ohio and we’ve got [attorneys general] investigating Ohio Medicaid fraud and South Carolina Medicaid fraud and Virginia Medicaid fraud. Where are your journalism students doing this? Why does it take 22-year-olds to do it? That’s the state of journalism today.

TheDC: What’s the goal with your nonprofit Project Veritas?

O’Keefe: To investigate and expose waste, fraud, abuse, dishonesty, corruption in order to achieve a more ethical and transparent society.

TheDC: Who helps fund you?

O’Keefe: Small donors that send us money on the Internet, small donors that send us money through direct mail and people who send us checks to our P.O. box.

TheDC: Do you ever feel sketchy about the undercover work you’re doing?

O’Keefe: Do you feel sketchy about the undercover work that ABC News Primetime Nightline and Diane Sawyer did and the work that Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes did and the undercover work that NBC’s Dateline did to catch a predator and that won Emmy Awards and Peabody Awards? There’s no distinction between what I do and they do except that I release the full, unedited tapes. They don’t.

TheDC: Do you ever trust anything NPR says?

O’Keefe: It’s not that I don’t trust them. But if they are firing people because they disagree with their opinions [he’s referring to the ousting of commentator Juan Williams for comments about Muslims that some saw as intolerant], that is probably something that is wrong. But I don’t have any political problems with the subjects. If they are getting taxpayer money, millions and millions and millions of dollars worth, we deserve to know what these editors and people are thinking about the American people. We’re trying to expose that.