NBC Profiles O'Keefe for ACORN Sting, Mentions Planned Parenthood Racist Phone Call Story

On Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News, correspondent Mara Schiavocampo filed a report based on her interview with video producer James O’Keefe, famous for his recently released video clips which exposed the willingness by a significant number of ACORN employees to give advice on breaking the law to O’Keefe, who posed as a pimp, and his friend Hannah Giles, who posed as an underage prostitute. But Schiavocampo also mentioned some of O’Keefe’s past work, including audio clips of Planned Parenthood employees reacting with indifference to the expression of racist views as O’Keefe posed as a potential donor to the abortion provider who requested that his donation go toward eliminating the birth of black children.

After relating that O'Keefe had gone from producing videos as pranks to targeting Planned Parenthood in what Schiavocampo referred to as "more outrageous political fare – like calling Planned Parenthood to see if they would accept donations to abort black babies," a clip of one such phone call was played:

AUDIO CLIP OF O’KEEFE SPEAKING TO A PLANNED PARENTHOOD EMPLOYEE BY PHONE: There's too many black people in Ohio, so I’m just trying to do my part.

AUDIO CLIP OF UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE EMPLOYEE OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD: Okay, whatever.

Last year, FNC shows like The O’Reilly Factor were among the few places in television news where viewers could hear the series of audio clips that focused on the acceptance of racist comments by employees of Planned Parenthood, an organization which was in fact founded in the 1920s by eugenics proponent Margaret Sanger, who wished to eliminate populations she believed to be inferior.

Below is a complete transcript of the report from the Wednesday, September 23, NBC Nightly News:

BRIAN WILLIAMS: Tonight, an NBC News exclusive. In his first broadcast network news interview, the young man behind the Candid Camera-like spoof that has caused so much backlash against the group ACORN, he tells his story. ACORN has now filed a lawsuit over his hidden camera video that got two of its Baltimore office employees fired and touched off a big internal investigation. NBC’s Mara Schiavocampo has our story.

MARA SCHIAVOCAMPO: This is how most of the world was introduced to James O'Keefe, as a young video producer dressed like a pimp for a hidden camera investigation into ACORN – the community advocacy group whose voter registration efforts in disadvantaged communities were targeted by President Obama's opponents last year. And this is how I met him, as a soft spoken self-described radical dealing with an awful lot of new attention-

UNIDENTIFIED MAN TALKING TO JAMES O’KEEFE: We think you’re unbelievable.

SCHIAVOCAMPO: -that's caught him completely by surprise. Did you expect all these repercussions when you started?

JAMES O’KEEFE, VIDEO PRODUCER: No.

SCHIAVOCAMPO: Posing as a pimp and prostitute, O’Keefe and Hannah Giles – a friend he met on FaceBook – caught ACORN employees in five cities appearing to give advice on tax evasion, human smuggling and prostitution.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE PLANNED PARENTHOOD EMPLOYEE: If you’re just taking money from underage prostitutes, oh my God, that doesn't sound good.

SCHIAVOCAMPO: O’Keefe says he and Giles spent about $1,300 to fund their trips, though he won't say how many offices they visited. Do you consider yourself a conservative?

O’KEEFE: I consider myself a progressive radical. I don't really want to conserve anything.

SCHIAVOCAMPO: How do you define yourself? As a journalist, as an activist?

O’KEEFE: I don't have a business card. I mean, I'm too busy doing what I do. I let other people frame it the way they want.

SCHIAVOCAMPO: It's a controversial style O’Keefe has been honing since his college days at Rutgers University. He started with pranks like complaining about Lucky Charms being served in the dining halls-

O’KEEFE, IN VIDEO ADDRESSING A SMALL GROUP: As you can see, we’re not all short, green. We have our differences of height, and we think this is stereotypical of all Irish-Americans.

SCHIAVOCAMPO: -and moved on to more outrageous political fare – like calling Planned Parenthood to see if they would accept donations to abort black babies.

AUDIO CLIP OF O’KEEFE SPEAKING TO A PLANNED PARENTHOOD EMPLOYEE BY PHONE: There's too many black people in Ohio, so I’m just trying to do my part.

AUDIO CLIP OF UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE EMPLOYEE OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD: Okay, whatever.

SCHIAVOCAMPO: O’Keefe plans to release more ACORN footage in the coming weeks, and has already started thinking about his next project.

O’KEEFE: I would hope to be able to do more of these types of things and expose more corruption and do more investigating, absolutely. I would love to be able to do it. It would be a privilege to be able to do this for a time.

SCHIAVOCAMPO: His hope, that this introduction to the public is the beginning of a long relationship. Mara Schiavocampo, NBC News, New York.