Atop My Soap Box

I'm sure by now you've all heard about the scandals at NPR uncovered by this asshat who makes up a fake organization/persona/story to get in the door, then surreptitiously (5 syllables, bitches!) videotapes his subjects to further his angry, angry conservative agenda.

My issue today isn't really with the results (that's an entirely different post), but with his methods. James O'Keefe claims to be a journalist, but he's misrepresenting himself to gain access to his subjects. In the world of journalism this is a huge no-no (and in the world of law, i'm pretty sure i read somewhere that taping someone w/o telling them is illegal). UPDATE: Turns out it's not illegal to tape someone w/o their consent. Add one more thing to the list of 'shit I talked about without having any true facts.'

He claims that it's the only way he could get this access, and he might be right. After all, who is going to do an interview with James O'Keefe besides his pals at Fox News, AEI, etc.?

The point is that the end does not justify the means. To be a journalist there are ethics you need to adhere to, and you need to at least attempt to tell both sides of the story. The problem with places like Fox News and their little bitch-boy surrogates like O'Keefe is that they have no interest in telling the news to advance public knowledge, etc...Their goal is to drive a ideological conservative agenda, even if that means lying, cheating and stealing to get to that goal.

If you agree that this is a bullshit way to create/report the news, maybe you should go over to Project Veritas (see, he used LATIN, which means he's smart and stuff. Or that he's a douchebag) and send Mr Fair and Balanced an email telling him why he's not a journalist, and how he's doing a lot of damage to true journalists by lying to gain access to subjects.

Politically-driven journalism is really not the way we want to go in this country. Look to China and other oppressed nations to see what happens when one voice controls the media. At the very least, it means you'll likely end up using IE 6 forever, and that's just plain wrong.