Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe was so tickled by The Washington Post’s decision to issue a retraction stemming from its coverage of his latest undercover sting operation that he decided to frame it.
And because this is Project Veritas, of course there’s a video.
Mr. O’Keefe enjoyed an “I-told-you-so” moment at The Post’s expense in a video released Friday after the newspaper issued a correction even though the reporter who wrote the story, Paul Farhi, had said previously no retraction would be coming.
“Well, guess what: Sunday night very late, in the dead of night, the Washington Post issued a massive retraction on the story with a massive editor’s note that went right under the headline,” Mr. O’Keefe said in the video. “So my team worked day and night this week to find just the frame to put this beautiful retraction in.”
The announcement followed a brouhaha over the newspaper’s coverage of a Project Veritas undercover video released June 26 featuring CNN producer John Bonifield, who said the cable network was pushing the “bulls—-” Russia-Trump election-interference story in order to juice “ratings.”
The Post followed up with a June 28 story, “What the latest James O’Keefe video leaves out,” accusing Project Veritas of failing to mention that Mr. Bonifield was a medical producer and that he was located in Atlanta.
“It also doesn’t disclose that he is based in Atlanta — not in Washington or New York, where most of CNN’s coverage of national affairs and politics are produced,” said The Post article.
In the video, Project Veritas referred to Mr. Bonifield as a “supervising producer” — the CNN websiteidentifies him as “supervising producer for the CNN Medical Unit” — and did in fact say that he was in Atlanta.
The editor’s note now posted atop the Post article says, “This story has been updated to remove the assertion that the video in question did not say that supervising producer John Bonifield is based in Atlanta. In fact, the video says: ’I’d like to introduce you to CNN supervising producer John Bonifield in Atlanta,’ which is CNN’s headquarters and is where many of its journalists are based.”
The editor’s note came after Mr. Farhi said on Twitter that there would be no retraction in response to a slew of tweets calling for him to correct the record.
“Sorry to disappoint you, folks. There is NO retraction coming. Your tweet appears to be fake news,” Mr. Farhi said in a June 28 tweet shown on the Project Veritas video.
The CNN video was one of several released since June 26 as part of Project Veritas’s “American Pravda” project targeting the news industry.
Mr. O’Keefe noted that his group is often accused by its critics of deceptively editing its videos, which he has long denied.
“Even though they claim that we selectively edit, it doesn’t get more selective or deceptive than this, with a headline, ’What the latest video leaves out,’ and the editor’s note: ’He didn’t leave it out,’” Mr. O’Keefe said.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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