Project Veritas: how fake news prize went to the group beloved and financed by Trump
In response to: James O’Keefe’s organisation specialising in media stings received donations from Trump’s foundation but was caught red-handed peddling a false story
In response to: At the unusually late hour of 9.04am on Monday morning, Donald Trump marked his return to Washington after Thanksgiving by announcing a big new idea. There should be a contest, he tweeted, to determine which media outlet should be awarded the “fake news trophy” for being “most dishonest, corrupt and/or distorted in its political coverage”.
Protesters And Trump Supporters Gather In D.C. For Donald Trump Inauguration<br>WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 20: Police and demonstrators clash in downtown Washington after a limo was set on fire following the inauguration of President Donald Trump on January 20, 2017 in Washington, DC. Washington and the entire world have watched the transfer of the United States presidency from Barack Obama to Donald Trump, the 45th president. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
US government uses Project Veritas video in trial of anti-Trump protesters
Just hours later, the first winner of the president’s new medal emerged, though the trophy holder was not quite as he had expected. Instead of CNN or one of the TV networks that Trump frequently assails, the award for scurrilous and deceitful practice went to someone much closer to home.
On Monday afternoon, Project Veritas, the discredited rightwing attack organization run by James O’Keefe that specializes in sting operations against liberal groups and the established media, was itself thoroughly exposed. The Washington Post turned the spotlight that O’Keefe had tried to put on the newspaper back on him by disclosing a plot to dupe its reporters into publishing an entirely false story.
The fake account was peddled by a woman named Jaime Phillips who claimed to have had an abortion when she was 15 after s*xual encounters with the Republican senatorial candidate in Alabama, Roy Moore. Post reporters did their due diligence, grew suspicious of her narrative, and later watched her walking into the Project Veritas offices in New York.
They also discovered a GoFundMe page under the name of Jaime Phillips in which she said she had accepted a job in New York “to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceit of the liberal MSM”. When these matters were put to O’Keefe in a filmed encounter, he refused to answer questions about the apparent attempt to plant a fake story on the Post presumably intended to undermine the paper’s earlier exposé of Moore’s alleged molestation of underage girls as young as 14.
On 13 May 2015, a month before Trump launched his presidential campaign, his charitable foundation donated $10,000 to Project Veritas. This week ThinkProgress spotted that the foundation’s tax disclosure form for 2015 records a second payment of the same amount to the conservative group.
By then O’Keefe had already acquired a criminal record – he was convicted in 2010 of entering federal property under false pretences. He had been attempting to sting the then Democratic senator from Louisiana, Mary Landrieu, but for his pains was rewarded with three years’ probation and a $1,500 fine.
The underhand tactics that Project Veritas adopted in its notorious takedown of the progressive network Acorn and that it later applied to media organisations has attracted growing condemnation from unexpected quarters. In 2011 Blaze, the rightwing outlet founded by Glenn Beck, investigated O’Keefe’s treatment of National Public Radio and concluded that the editing of a secretly filmed video seemed “designed to intentionally lie or mislead about the material being presented”.
Protesters And Trump Supporters Gather In D.C. For Donald Trump Inauguration<br>WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 20: Police and demonstrators clash in downtown Washington after a limo was set on fire following the inauguration of President Donald Trump on January 20, 2017 in Washington, DC. Washington and the entire world have watched the transfer of the United States presidency from Barack Obama to Donald Trump, the 45th president. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
US government uses Project Veritas video in trial of anti-Trump protesters
Just hours later, the first winner of the president’s new medal emerged, though the trophy holder was not quite as he had expected. Instead of CNN or one of the TV networks that Trump frequently assails, the award for scurrilous and deceitful practice went to someone much closer to home.
On Monday afternoon, Project Veritas, the discredited rightwing attack organization run by James O’Keefe that specializes in sting operations against liberal groups and the established media, was itself thoroughly exposed. The Washington Post turned the spotlight that O’Keefe had tried to put on the newspaper back on him by disclosing a plot to dupe its reporters into publishing an entirely false story.
The fake account was peddled by a woman named Jaime Phillips who claimed to have had an abortion when she was 15 after s*xual encounters with the Republican senatorial candidate in Alabama, Roy Moore. Post reporters did their due diligence, grew suspicious of her narrative, and later watched her walking into the Project Veritas offices in New York.
They also discovered a GoFundMe page under the name of Jaime Phillips in which she said she had accepted a job in New York “to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceit of the liberal MSM”. When these matters were put to O’Keefe in a filmed encounter, he refused to answer questions about the apparent attempt to plant a fake story on the Post presumably intended to undermine the paper’s earlier exposé of Moore’s alleged molestation of underage girls as young as 14.
On 13 May 2015, a month before Trump launched his presidential campaign, his charitable foundation donated $10,000 to Project Veritas. This week ThinkProgress spotted that the foundation’s tax disclosure form for 2015 records a second payment of the same amount to the conservative group.
By then O’Keefe had already acquired a criminal record – he was convicted in 2010 of entering federal property under false pretences. He had been attempting to sting the then Democratic senator from Louisiana, Mary Landrieu, but for his pains was rewarded with three years’ probation and a $1,500 fine.
The underhand tactics that Project Veritas adopted in its notorious takedown of the progressive network Acorn and that it later applied to media organisations has attracted growing condemnation from unexpected quarters. In 2011 Blaze, the rightwing outlet founded by Glenn Beck, investigated O’Keefe’s treatment of National Public Radio and concluded that the editing of a secretly filmed video seemed “designed to intentionally lie or mislead about the material being presented”.
Why would anyone believe any story from this repulsive and contemptible site? Unless paid to do so of course
Comments (7)
Good to see you came to terms with that rIZ)
Emphasis on the word story!
They would rather read something baseless, that supports what they already believe, than the truth.
The same will happen when the future proves the vaccines are safe and that less than 0.01 died from the vaccine, roughly the same number that died from the Polio vaccine.
VAERS is a prime example where the anti-vaxxers are taking all deaths reported to imply they are vaccine-related when the truth is no one yet knows if there is any correlation between deaths and the vaccine.
Evidence shows the vaccine is extremely safe with a tiny number of less than 0.03% of deaths being actually attributed to the vaccine.
One needs to question just why Anti-vaccine people are so vocal and why they can only post disinformation using sources known to publish lies and misinformation, never once posting information from credible sources. They are certainly not posting to be helpful that's for sure.