When news broke of right-wing activist James O’Keefe’s weird, creepy attempted stunt against CNN, the Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell was unsually quick to denounce it:
“The MRC unequivocally denounces James O’Keefe for his attempted assault on CNN. It isn’t just childish and immature; it’s ugly, dishonest and filthy. There is no place in the conservative movement for this type of behavior and that’s exactly what I warned about in a commentary piece I submitted to CNN.com just two days ago. ‘Could the Citizen Journalist abuse the public trust?’ I wrote in this piece that should run in the next few days. ‘Hypothetically, of course. Conservatives must all guard against this. Let there be scrutiny, by all means.’ And I repeat: there must be scrutiny.”
“Bottom line: We want nothing to do with O’Keefe or his dirty antics.”
What Bozell didn’t do is mention the MRC’s support of O’Keefe’s previous antics.
NewsBusters touted the impact of O’Keefe’s undercover ACORN stunt — Lachlan Markay proudly declared it a “case study in combating media liberalism” — and even rushed to his defense following his arrest inside Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office preparing for another stunt.
As recently as June, MRC news analyst Scott Whitlock was upset that ABC’s George Stephanopoulos was confronting O’Keefe with indisputable facts like that he’s an activist and not a journalist, and his ACORN undercover stunt uncovered no illegal activity.
Will the MRC and its writers address their previous support of O’Keefe and his stunts? Somehow we suspect not.