James O Keefe: III is a self-described “guerrilla journalist” and community organizer who conducts undercover investigations and distributes the recordings through Project Veritas and Project Veritas Action, two nonprofit organizations.
His videos look into and expose corruption and fraud in both the public and private sectors, with a focus on progressive and Democratic issues.
The Career of James O Keefe
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O’Keefe began his conservative political career while an undergraduate student at Rutgers University, after growing up in a New Jersey home that, according to his father, was traditional “but not rigorously so.” After working there for a while, he left the school paper to start his conservative journal, The Centurion. O’Keefe also began dabbling with filmmaking during his stay at Rutgers.
James O Keefe went to work at the Leadership Institute, a 501(c) conservative training organization in Arlington, Virginia, after graduating in 2006.
During his year-long stint, O’Keefe visited college campuses and taught students how to launch traditional journals of their own.
O’Keefe shot and released a video in 2007 while working for the Leadership Institute showing a Planned Parenthood staffer pushing an undercover reporter masquerading as a 15-year-old girl pregnant to lie about her age to seek an abortion. As a result of the footage, the employee was terminated.
The Leadership Institute’s president “told James to stop his sting activities or resign” since the organization couldn’t lawfully participate in political advocacy.
ACORN is conducting an inquiry.
After a year at the Leadership Institute, O’Keefe left to pursue undercover investigative recordings, with ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, as his first target.
The group’s original mission, when it was founded in 1970, was to assist those who were poor in obtaining basic requirements. Shortly after its founding.
The group became involved in politics and became a component of the social justice movement. By 2010, the organization had almost 500,000 members and was active in 75 cities across the United States.
James O Keefe and Hannah Giles, a conservative activist, went undercover as a pimp and prostitute and secretly filmed discussions with ACORN workers across the country. ACORN personnel are overheard coaching O’Keefe and Giles on how to avoid paying taxes and misrepresenting their sources of income in order to run a prostitution business.
The recordings ran on Fox News and BigGovernment, the late Andrew Breitbart’s website, catapulting O’Keefe into the national spotlight. As a result of the recordings, Congress voted to defund ACORN, and the group was formally dissolved six months later.
After an outside investigation into ACORN’s operations, the group was cleared of any wrongdoing in the incident in 2009.
Break-in at Mary Landrieu’s house
James O Keefe and three other undercover videographers were detained in January 2010 at Sen.
Mary Landrieu’s (D-La.) New Orleans office and charged with entering government property under false pretences with the purpose to commit a felony. The goal, according to police, was to tamper with the senator’s phone system.
In May of 2010, O’Keefe pleaded guilty to entering property belonging to the United States under false pretences, a misdemeanour crime. Three years of probation, a $1,500 fine, and 100 hours of community service were imposed on him.
An investigation by NPR
He founded Project Veritas, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, in June 2010. “Investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misbehaviour in both public and private organizations in order to establish a more ethical and transparent society,” says the organization’s mission statement.
O’Keefe has continued his provocative work and produced a succession of notable exposés since starting Project Veritas.
In 2011, O’Keefe and the organization published a video in which Ron Schiller, NPR’s senior vice president for development, appeared to rave about Republicans and the Tea Party, suggesting that the station would be “better off” without federal financing.
The films were then discovered to be manipulated and “intended to purposefully lie or mislead about the material being delivered,” according to conservative news outlet The Blaze. Ron Schiller and NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation) resigned as a result of the tape, and Congress voted to defund NPR, however the bill died in the Senate.
Voter fraud in the 2016 election is being investigated.
In October 2016, O’Keefe’s company, Project Veritas Action Fund, released video recordings of Democratic strategists discussing illegal voter registration and techniques for upsetting then-Republican presidential contender Donald Trump and his followers at rallies.
Time claimed in an article summarising the initial Project Veritas films, which were released on October 17 and 18, 2016, that.
A contractor appears to brag in one video about sending homeless and mentally ill people to harass Republicans. Someone identifying as a DNC staffer appears to take credit for inciting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s event in Chicago to become violent.
In another, advisers appear to be discussing a strategy to transport voters over state lines and register illegal aliens to vote.
Other projects
O’Keefe and Project Veritas have published films on themes like teachers unions and voter fraud since his first documented probe. In 2014, he disguised up as Osama Bin Laden and crossed the Mexican border into the United States to demonstrate the border’s flaws. Breakthrough: Our Guerrilla War to Expose Fraud and Save Democracy, O’Keefe’s debut book, was a New York Times bestseller in 2013.
Opposition
O’Keefe has been chastised for his investigative journalism style as well as the editing of the final films. Conor Friedersdorf, writing for The Atlantic, said, “However, O’Keefe’s mortal sin in the ACORN tapes is deceiving the public. His videos are distributed to the public in less-than-honest methods that go much beyond traditional’selectivity.
NPR reported in October 2016 that O’Keefe had a history of releasing manipulated recordings from undercover investigations in the past, adding.
O’Keefe and Project Veritas have a history of selectively — and at times misleadingly — manipulating their videos. They haven’t uploaded raw footage in the past, but they haven’t done so with these new stings.
The chair of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), Andrew Seaman, went even farther in his criticism of O’Keefe’s methods, telling The Washington Post, “If we look at James O’Keefe’s conduct in the framework of [the SPJ’s ethics code], we can’t say he’s an ethical journalist.
He clearly has an agenda, resorts to underhanded reporting methods, and has a track record of falsifying facts and context.”
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