Earlier this week, in a segment on his NPR video exposé, PBS’s NewsHour aired the false claim James O Keefe pleaded guilty to attempting to bug the offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu:
And last year [O’Keefe] was arrested and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of attempting to bug the offices of Louisiana Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu.
O’Keefe and company pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of entering federal property under false pretenses. There were never any allegations of a plot to bug or wiretap Sen. Landrieu in the FBI affidavit and a law enforcement official conceded over a year ago that the four men were not attempting to wiretap or intercept calls. Despite all that, the reporter from PBS makes a definitive and erroneous claim that the activists pleaded guilty to attempting to bug Landrieu’s phones. What’s more, legal representation for the accused went on record in January of last year, almost immediately after the arrest, stating there were no intentions to tap phones in the Senator’s office.
The bogus media meme that O’Keefe was trying to bug or wiretap a U.S. Senator was proven false a year ago. We advise PBS and its reporters bring themselves up to speed on this story before they report on it further.
We respectfully ask PBS to issue a correction/retraction.