One of the most frustrating things about watching NPR reacting to the latest O’Keefe sting was how boringly predictable it all was. The media lives in great fear of the dreaded “liberal” description overreacts swiftly and then we find out that important parts of the video were altered. Gee, didn’t see that coming at all. The only surprising part was that it was Glenn Beck’s The Blaze that did the initial debunking (you can read their report here).
I’m sure none of you were surprised to read that parts where Schiller describes himself as a Republican (and proud of it) were edited out and statements were moved in time to make Schiller look like he was agreeing to odd statements by the actors. Schiller’s full quote about the racism of the Tea Party was also dishonestly altered. This is the last straw, according to Politico:
Reporters regularly feel a temptation to bolster their cases dishonestly. One of the things you learn in most newsrooms is that your case is stronger if you bend over backward to be, and show that, you’re fair, to anticipate and address possible objections.
This bit of editing, like the entire Shirley Sherrod video and various others, took advantage of a system of aggregation that’s basically based on trust. Other elements of the NPR scoop seem to hold up, though the Blaze’s writer also says that “in this first clip the video (complete with “timecode” stamp) continues to play while the audio goes into some kind of glitchy loop. This could be an actual glitch, though not one I’ve seen like this in 25 years of working with video editing.”
You can’t aggregate, or even really comment on, what you don’t trust, and it’s very hard to think of a good reason to have clipped the video just there if it wasn’t to turn a good story into a great one a case at the expense of the reality. The damage is, again, done; I regret having, even in what I thought was a cautious way, picked up the story.
Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, fool me multiple times I’m the mainstream media? Why wasn’t there any soul-searching after O’Keefe did this with ACORN or Shirley Sherrod? Until the media stops reacting with anything but laughter and ignores O’Keefe things will not change. What incentive does O’Keefe have to change his behavior? Absolutely none because he keeps getting the response he wants. Perhaps the rest of the media is finally learning that this can