Monday, March 14, 2011

You Know You're a Lying Right-Wing Con Man If...

...Glenn Beck's "news" website, The Blaze, says so. The recent made-up NPR scandal perpetrated by James O'Keefe is once again coming under fire for its deceptive editing techniques. Like his previous videos (ACORN, Shirley Sherrod, Planned Parenthood, etc), O'Keefe has presented a lie to his audience and the media has eaten it up. He took snippets from here and placed them there to change context of phrases and comments. The video implies that NPR took millions of dollars from the "Muslim Brotherhood," though no money was ever exchanged (in fact, it was rejected). This is a pattern on the right wherein they use secretly recorded videos to "expose" groups they don't like. Yet, in every single incident it has been definitively proven that the videos were doctored significantly, so much so that it obscures the real meaning of conversations presented in the videos. Hell, even Glenn Beck's own website says the videos were "unethical" and "deceptively edited."

For a refresher course on the tactics of James O'Keefe, check here. It's funny, because the right has invested so much time and energy in perpetuating the myth of the "liberal media" that it has created its own alternate media universe. Now, with its own media, the right creates its own news, its own controversies, and its own standards. Sadly, there are no standards in the new right wing media world, and actual journalists don't seem to realize this.

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