At NewsBusters late Wednesday afternoon, Tim Graham observed that many news outlets, including the Associated Press and most of the nation’s major newspapers, had not yet covered "the Project Veritas videos exposing Democratic operatives talking about voter fraud and inciting violence at Donald Trump rallies."
Graham's explanation: The non-coverage "marginalizes these charges enough that if Donald Trump brought it up" in Wednesday night's debate, many viewers unaware of the games the press plays with news timing wouldn't believe it — because after all, they surely would have seen important news like this reported by now. As if by magic, the Associated Press squeezed in a report on the Veritas videos which could easily have been filed Tuesday evening — and posted it at 8:14 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, 46 minutes before the third presidential debate officially began.
The timing, worked out nicely — if the objective was to say, "Yeah, we covered it," but with the goal of minimizing the story's visibility.
The AP report, found at its Big Story site, is already off the site's front page, assuming it ever appeared there at all, considering all of the competing debate-related stories.
At least the dispatch can be found there by searching on Veritas videographer James O'Keefe's last name. That's not the case with the AP's main national site.
The story is present at the main national site, but searching on O'Keefe's last name returns no results. Strangely, a search on "Keefe" (without the "O" and the apostrophe) does return recent stories containing "O'Keefe." That appears to be a search engine programming bug, it's mighty convenient in this instance in keeping readers away from Julie Bykowicz's disgraceful story, filed with the assistance of former Journolist member Lisa Lerer.
It would take at least three posts to fully tear apart the AP's dispatch, so I'll have to concentrate on just a few lowlights (full videos are posted here with synopsis-level analysis; bolds are mine):
VIDEO: DEM ACTIVIST BRAGGED ABOUT DISRUPTING TRUMP RALLIES
Conservative activist James O'Keefe has released secretly recorded, selectively edited video footage that includes a Democratic activist bragging about deploying troublemakers at rallies held by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
The AP's "selectively edited" line is the among the most tired and dishonest arguments around.
Virtually every videotaped report which appears at a news outlet makes selections from available raw footage to include in news broadcasts and posted videos. This is done to remove parts that are boring or irrelevant, and to fit the video report into its allotted time. In other words, these reports are edited. None of them are labeled "selectively edited," though they have been, because even most laymen understand the process.
The AP is particularly hypocritical here, because it has a specific category for "raw videos," where the cameraperson simply lets a single camera run for a short period of time, sometimes with a narrator providing a voiceover. This category's existence indicates that every other AP video is "selectively edited."
The only reason the AP has to describe O'Keefe's videos as "selectively edited" is to make readers believe that there is something underhanded about how O'Keefe did his work. Bykowicz's report provides no evidence of any kind that there is something underhanded about it, making her "selectively edited" claim, as presented, presumptively fundamentally dishonest.
Continuing:
After O'Keefe began releasing videos this week, two Democratic operatives stopped working on the presidential race and both the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton's campaign denounced the tactics described in the footage. Both said the activities described never took place.
... The central character in the recordings is Scott Foval, a Wisconsin-based liberal operative. He is portrayed in the footage as boasting about his connections to the party and the Clinton campaign, and claiming to have arranged for people, including some who are mentally ill, to incite violence at Trump rallies.
"Stopped working"?
Foval, mentioned above, was "fired," a word which does not appear in the AP report. Foval's separation has been reported as a firing at the Politico, Business Insider ("CNN reported Foval had been fired"), the Fresno Bee (revising the AP's original report to ensure the word "firing" appeared; thanks, guys), and the far-left Slate.com. That's because they understood what Americans United for Change President Brad Woodhouse was saying in his related statement that "Scott Foval is no longer associated with Americans United for Change."
The other operative who "stopped working," Robert Creamer, is described later in the AP's report as having "voluntarily ended his DNC contract on Tuesday, saying he was doing so to avoid becoming an election-time 'distraction.'" That means he "resigned," another real-world word the AP did not use in the Wednesday evening report.
To its credit, the AP did report that "His (Creamer's) DNC contract called for him to stage Democratic events outside Trump rallies, and he hired Foval as a subcontractor."
To its detriment, the AP, which disingenuously claimed that "Foval appears to have been several steps removed from the presidential race," didn't tell readers that Creamer, who hired Foval, has, according to visitor logs, visited the White House over 300 times since Barack Obama became President, and visited Obama himself 47 times. On Wednesday, in another development that surely would have been reported during a Republican or conservative presidential administration, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest disputed "the suggestion that somehow these are 40 different one-on-one meetings in the Oval Office” with the president. (Well, of course not. Valerie Jarrett was probably there for every one. That's sarcasm, folks — I think.)
As to the claim by Foval and Creamer that "the activities described never took place," even if they meant to say that they weren't involved in activities which did take place, including the disruption of a Trump rally in Chicago which the then-GOP primary candidate had to cancel for safety reasons, they're not telling the truth.
A self-described "stay-at-home mom" has proven that Americans United For Change orchestrated a protest at Republican National Committee headquarters on May 12. Additionally, one of the organization's players seen in the video was almost certainly at the protest, which also featured signs made in accordance with AUFC's requests as seen in WikiLeaks emails:
The person seen in the video, irresponsibly never named in the AP's story, is Aaron (Minter) Black. In the first of O'Keefe's videos, Black takes credit for the Chicago disruption and cancellation. But he also gives substantial credit — not to Foval, but to Creamer:
Black's statement makes a mockery of Creamer's claim in the AP report that "Democrats have, in fact, sought to limit their contact with Trump supporters."
Here's an unmistakable admission of coordination with the highest levels of the Democratic Party with "plausible deniability," and the importance of maintaining plausible deniability so that Astroturf efforts appear to be from the grassroots —
Here's a comment on importance of coopting the press —
Foval acknowledges the Democrats' long history of bussing people to vote multiple times in elections, known in some quarters as the very "election rigging" the press is pretending never happens (this and the final two quotes have been cleansed of profanity):
Foval also identified the vulnerability of the voting systems in two Midwestern states, one of which (Indiana) is currently conducting a vote-registration fraud investigation encompassing 56 counties:
No one can reasonably doubt that if the tactics cited and the statements made involved Republicans or conservatives, they would have been reported.
Finally, Foval and his party have a special gift for the people of Iowa and Wisconsin:
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
