James O’Keefe, the conservative videographer behind “stings” of groups like ACORN and Planned Parenthood, is reacting to the pushback against internet fake news, or fabricated articles posing as real news items, by vowing to infiltrate what he calls “fake news” operations—mainstream news organizations like ABC and NBC, and news aggregators like Google and Facebook.
In an email to followers of his Project Veritas yesterday, O’Keefe claimed that a recent Media Matters report about him was a “lie” and announced that he is reacting to media distrust of his skewed reporting tactics by “going into the belly of the beast”:
They think they can lie about us at will and we’ll slink away.
Instead, we’re doubling down and going into the belly of the beast.
…
We’re sending our own set of journalists to go into the organizations that have been purveyors of “Fake News” for decades. From ABC and NBC to Google, Facebook and Twitter, we’re intent on setting these organizations straight by showing the public what really goes on behind the close doors of the “news” rooms.
As these organizations prepare to gear up against the incoming president, we’ll be there to show you, with video evidence, their real agenda.
As Jeremy Peters at The New York Times noted this week, conservative media figures like O’Keefe have been attempting to neutralize the “fake news” label by applying it to mainstream news organizations.
