O'Keefe's videos are good but overhyped. He's a mix of muckraker and PT Barnum.
Will be interesting to see what he has but I doubt it's anything groundbreaking. His biggest video is still the ACORN one.
There were some problems with the ACORN videos. For one thing in the intros O’Keefe was dressed in a pretty outrageous pimp outfit and his accomplice Giles was dressed as a prostitute, which they also wore in subsequent TV media interviews.
However, these were not the outfits they actually wore while filming the sting videos - they were wearing normal street clothes, but the way he edited the videos, it made it appear that they were wearing the pimp and ho outfits when they went to the ACORN offices.
And when under pressure and in exchange for prosecutorial immunity, the full and unedited videos were released, the sequence of some conversations had been changed, some were left out and some workers seemed concerned for Giles safety, one advising her to get legal help. In two cities, ACORN workers called the police. One former ACORN employee, Juan Carlos Vera who was implicated in the edited version as aiding a human smuggling proposal and lost his job as a result, had immediately reported his encounter with the couple to police detectives at the time to thwart their plan and he successfully sued O’Keefe.
There were none the less enough damaging things on the tapes to sink ACORN and deservedly so. But some of O’Keefe’s methods and edits in this and others like the NPR video and his aborted attempt to sting a CNN reporter, Abbie Boudreau by trying to seduce her* has damaged his credibility and his legal woes with the Landrieu sting has called his methods into question and damaged his credibility and objectivity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O%27Keefe#Abbie_Boudreau_.282010.29http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/10/05/okeefe.prank.cnn/O’Keefe has thus far refused to release the unedited tapes in his latest sting as he’s done with others, saying that “Are "journalists" willing to produce their raw unedited materials to accompany their word arrangements? It'd probably paint a diff picture!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=200&v=npYAqkObLqUO’Keefe makes a good point, however a defense of “other journalists are dishonest with their edits and are not willing to produce their raw unedited materials” isn’t IMO the best defense.
O’Keefe has attempted to do some good investigative journalism and of course the MSM will try to discredit him but he’s also shot himself in the foot many times.
