James O’Keefe in Defense of Taping Mitch McConnell, and Everyone Else

[DonViejo]

by James O'Keefe Apr 15, 2013 4:45 AM EDT

Anti-taping laws hurt democracy by shielding the powers that be from accountability, writes provocateur James O’Keefe.

“Break in, bribe, seduce and lie; anything to break through that palace guard and get the story,” said investigative reporter Robert Scheer, according to a article by Abbie Hoffman in a decades-old edition of Mother Jones magazine. Sometimes I’ve broken through the palace guards, and other times the palace guards have nearly broken me. What didn’t jail me made me stronger and smarter. I’ve become all too familiar with civil and criminal statutes that are bad for democracy because they insolate those vested in a public trust from democratic accountability.

Those embroiled in fraud rarely make unprovoked admissions of licentious behavior, which is precisely why covert tactics are effective in exposing the truth. Yet the problem lies in the consequences of applying Scheer’s rule. If I were on the left, pushing the legal limits of recordings by secretly taping meetings of the National Rifle Association, I’d be a cause célèbre and win awards for journalistic excellence. Because my passion so far has been exposing government-funded sacred cows and disrupting statist narratives, I am an apostate. Therein the tragedy lies; a free press is supposed to defend the rights of journalists with whom they disagree. It’s not just ignoble for the mainstream to ignore my First Amendment crises when they’ve arisen; journalists who reflexively call for my prosecution put themselves outside their own values, assuming that support for the First Amendment is one of them. They must now confront these values head-on as surreptitious recordings spark a mainstream renaissance, opening the floodgates to a veritable constitutional crisis over privacy, consent, and the ability to protect anonymous whistleblowers.

Mother Jones magazine’s Washington bureau chief, David Corn, recently won a Polk journalism award after publishing a series of clandestine recordings. Writing later about how he came into possession of the tape, Corn noted that the recording raised a “question of possible criminal prosecution” in Florida, a two-party-consent state. His lawyers advised Scott Prouty (the bartender who captured then candidate Romney’s now famous “47 percent” comments), his anonymous source at the time, to “shut up and keep your head low.” This week, Corn stands to win another journalism award from Ithaca College for “outstanding achievement in independent media,” a week after a recording was released that captured a private conversation in Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky campaign office. Corn’s latest story could trigger felony eavesdropping charges. The FBI is investigating, and an official in the group Progress Kentucky has subsequently resigned, saying he “does not condone any allegations of illegal activity that might have taken place.” The murky nature of the Kentucky law makes it unclear whether it’s legal to record a barely audible conversation, according to NBC News. Sadly, rather than being viewed from the onset as a freedom-of-press issue, these debates split neatly down party lines, contingent upon who’s being investigated.

I received a unique education in this murkiness. My punishment—and I’m hardly the first journalist to be put through the legal wringer for aggressively pursuing the truth—changed my behavior. I’m hesitant to go into federal buildings, for example. I haven’t been arrested again for a reason.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/15/james-o-keefe-in-defense-of-taping-mitch-mcconnell-and-everyone-else.html

[Arkana]

1. O'Keefe's a snake.

He manufactured evidence, edited footage to make it incriminating, and tried to rape a CNN reporter.

He's not a journalist. He's a criminal.

[LTR]

2. Oh boo hoo

The difference is O'Keefe edited his recordings so blatantly as to present them as flat-out lies. And every time, he's been debunked and proven to be a fraud.

[backscatter712]

5. That's the difference.

O'Keefe has to edit his recordings to make his targets look bad.

We just have to play them straight & let characters like McConnell or Romney speak for themselves.

[Bonhomme Richard]

3. The disconnect. He really believes his own bullshit.

Editing a story to get the result you want is a far cry from reporting a story.

[ShadowLiberal]

4. He'd have much more ground to stand on if he didn't heavily edit/butcher his footage

It's one thing to secretly someone, it's quite another to heavily edit the footage of it to the point that it bares little resemblance to what actually happened.