Critics of James O’Keefe are prematurely dancing on his grave

Activist journalist James O’Keefe’s organization Project Veritas got one of their undercover personalities found out by the Washington Post and for some reason this is supposed to be a big deal. It isn’t, of course. O’Keefe’s projects are fishing expeditions that use undercover individuals to infiltrate organizations and report impropriety, illegal activity, or revelation of bias and internal conspiracy that contradicts and individual or organizations public presentation. Just like with actual-fishing, not every one of your lures gets a bite and that’s basically what happened here – as has happened dozens of times before with Veritas – but this time the spin is that the target (this time, The Washington Post) smelled the rat and exposed that they were targeted. Point for WashPo but that’s more of a side note than it is an actual story. Except it’s being treated as an actual-story in a transparent motivation to discredit and hopefully destroy O’Keefe – which is embarrassing because there’s just nothing there to make a big story out of. If these O’Keefe critics were smarter they would use this as a dismissive “lol – look at this cheap trick this guy tried. FAIL” type of short form “follies from Amateur Hour” commentary instead of the path his haters just can’t help themselves from taking by screaming “HA! SEE? BOOM! YOU SUCK!”. Oy vey you guys – chill…

If you think I’m exaggerating the goofy glee over a story that amounts to “a political journalist tried a sting and got stung” (I just made that up and am now disappointed in all the outlets who failed to use that turn of phrase themselves), take this piece on Mediate with the headline “Everyone Points and Laughs at James O’Keefe’s Incredibly Embarrassing Journalism Blunder”. It’s true that there is a great deal of pointing and laughing at O’Keefe over this, but there’s just no “blunder” here which is why there are no signs O’Keefe is embarrassed. Why would he be? In fact, he smartly leveraged the failure as a fundraising point and didn’t do so in a weasely “defeat means victory!” BS kind of way – he just straight up said that one of his operatives had their cover blown and the other reports that were successful in the same operation now need to be rushed to print to beat the Post from stealing the narrative.

That’s a frank and candid admission that doesn’t dodge anything and bluntly states the terms of the game he’s playing. So how is the media responding to that? With headlines like this:

But… it didn’t “blow up in his face” and he’s just claiming that he’s a Winner after Losing… he admitted a fail and put it in context of other items that are fair game for scrutiny just like any other reportage – so why this insistence on smearing him (complete with the unflattering stock photo trick of him mid-sentence so he’s making a derp face) with misleading innuendo?

Commentary Magazine gets the set-up right and the conclusion all wrong with a piece titled “Conservative Media Give Up“.

Over the course of two farcical hours, O’Keefe inadvertently established that the Washington Post’s reporters were pros, that the Post’s reporting on Moore was water-tight, and that his own organization—and Moore’s supporters, by extension—had little regard for the victims of sexual assault. After all, they had hired an activist to portray one toward a petty and political end, thus cheapening the experience of legitimate survivors.

All this is rather loathsome, and O’Keefe’s organization is due all the opprobrium it is receiving and more. But it also illustrates a condition that is rendering conservative activist media impotent: They have stopped caring about their audience.

Huh?… The first paragraph is legit but what is described right afterward is the exact opposite of what it says.

The thesis was that The Washington Post was so politically biased against Republicans that they were eager, in a politically activist (as opposed to traditional-journalistic) sense, to dive onto tabloid dirt about a Senate candidate in order to torpedo their election. O’Keefe tested this thesis. That’s his only “crime” he’s being pilloried for and that’s not a crime at all – it’s the accepted standard practice of thesis testing…

The same article even links to video O’Keefe released showing the Post’s national security reporter stating that his papers editorial board is being too hard on President Trump – mockingly adding “some bombshell”, as a way of bolstering the articles thesis that O’Keefe has “given up” on journalism and is “actively courting ignorance” in their audience. This makes no sense. O’Keefe had a thesis that the Post was unjustifiably harsh on Republicans and tested the thesis with undercover actors. He provided evidence for the thesis, got busted on one of his lures, and probably had a dozen others that just didn’t lead anywhere. So what? I too would call it a sarcastic “bombshell” (ie: not a bombshell) that the Washington Post has an anti-Republican bias, but you can’t take that position in the same article you praise what Pro’s at reporting that outlet is.

What this all amounts to is, ironically, that anti-Conservative-Media criticism has given up (even though to many degrees it never really tried). To do a take down of a figure, situation, or ideology, you have to actually take-it-down… Unfortunately however, ever since the G-Dubya years, Leftist criticism has sadly amounted to just mocking a misstep on on the other side in degrees far outside the parameters of what it merits as a mock-worthy or discrediting event. Whether it’s Bush getting a shoe thrown at him, or trying to open a locked door, or Trump tweeting something incendiary or goofy or an org like Project Veritas having a reporters cover blown amidst other successful finds – the focus is all wrong and it fails at what its attempting to do, which is tear down the individual involved.