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New York Times used ‘deceptive disinformation’ to smear Project Veritas, acted with ‘reckless disregard’ and ‘malice’, judge rules
20 Mar, 2021 19:09
Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe speaks at the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) © REUTERS/Octavio Jones
A defamation suit from Project Veritas against the New York Times is moving forward, as a judge has ruled the newspaper posed opinion as fact in their coverage of the conservative news outlet.
A New York Supreme Court judge handed Veritas, known for its undercover and whistleblowing videos, a big “win” this week, allowing a defamation suit against the paper and two reporters to proceed forward.
In the ruling denying a motion to dismiss the suit, the Times was accused of acting with “actual malice” and “reckless disregard” in multiple articles covering a 2020 video report from Veritas on alleged illegal voting practices taking place in Minnesota. It was not the only voter fraud allegation Veritas covered in 2020, with one video expose actually leading to the arrest of a Texas political consultant on charges of election fraud and illegal voting.
In the Minnesota video, multiple people are seen taking part in or discussing ballot harvesting and linking the act to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota). The report alleged ballots were being paid for and even filled out for voters to favor certain candidates. One ballot harvester featured in the video, Liban Osman, has since claimed footage of him was heavily edited and that he was offered money to connect the alleged fraud to Omar – an allegation Project Veritas denied.
The five Times articles in question called Veritas’ Minnesota videos deceptive, but Justice Charles Wood determined this was not fact, but rather opinion from reporters Maggie Astor and Tiffany Hsu.
“The Articles that are the subject of this action called the Video ‘deceptive,’ but the dictionary definitions of ‘disinformation’ and ‘deceptive’ provided by defendants’ counsel certainly apply to Astor’s and Hsu’s failure to note that they injected their opinions in news articles, as they now claim,” he wrote in his decision.
Astor referred to a “long history” of releasing “manipulated or selectively edited footage” on the part of Veritas in an article, while Hsu called the video “deceptive” in coverage.
Wood said this sort of vague coverage “could be viewed as exposing Veritas to ridicule and harm to its reputation as a media source because the reader may read these news Articles, expecting facts, not opinion, and conclude that Veritas is a partisan zealot group, deceptively editing video, and presenting it as news.”
Lawyers for the Times argued that a reader could determine that specific wording such as “deceptive” is opinion-based and cited other news outlets that used similar language, but Wood said the paper did not meet “their burden to prove that the reporting by Veritas in the Video is deceptive.”
Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe has celebrated the court victory as a “win” for his news outlet and promised that Astor and even New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet will now be put under oath “where they will be forced to answer our questions.”
“Project Veritas will record these depositions and expose them for the world to see,” he said.
CNN airs Trump CDC chief’s ‘opinion’ that Covid started as Wuhan Lab Leak,
argues he ‘sees & knows things the rest of us don’t’
26 Mar, 2021 15:19
FILE PHOTO. Donald Trump gives the podium to Robert Redfield. ©REUTERS / Jonathan Ernst
Trump-favored theory of the origin of Covid-19 pandemic as a lab leak in Wuhan seems to have been endorsed by CNN, which gave air to the former US president’s CDC director to make a case for his ‘opinion’.
The interview with Robert Redfield, who served as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under Donald Trump, was aired by CNN as part of a preview of an upcoming feature program called “COVID WAR: The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out.” In a one-on-one segment with CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, Redfield offered the latest reiteration of the claim that the outbreak of Covid-19 in China in late 2019 started as a leak from a virology lab.
“Other people don’t believe that. That’s fine. Science will eventually figure it out,” he said of the theory, adding that he didn’t imply “intentionality” – i.e., that a Chinese lab released the pathogen on purpose.
He explained his position: “It’s my opinion. But I am a virologist, I spent my time in virology. I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human… [and] became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human-to-human transmission.”
He suggested researchers in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the novel virus was first identified, could be working on making it “grow better and better and better” before it accidentally infected a worker, a scenario that Redfield called “not unusual for respiratory pathogens”.
The accidental lab leak theory was strongly advocated by members of the Trump administration, most notably Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Trump’s White House accused China and the World Health Organization (WHO) of covering things up and leaving the world unprepared to deal with the pandemic.
Beijing dismissed the allegations and said Washington was simply trying to shift the blame for its disastrous Covid-19 response to China, which, on the contrary, successfully kept the disease under control.
A WHO fact-finding mission that went to Wuhan to gather new evidence about the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus called the lab-leak scenario “extremely unlikely” and said the jump from bats to humans had probably happened through an intermediary animal. A full report on the team’s findings is expected soon.
CNN staff seemed to be accepting Redfield’s words without reservations. A panel discussion after the fragments of the interview were aired concurred that a CDC head “sees things and knows things that the rest of us don’t see”.
“He is talking to people on the ground, not just his counterparts in the China CDC. But we have investigators on the ground in various countries around the world, including China,” Gupta posited, adding that he was referring to “intelligence gathering”.
The news network is known for its reverence of the US intelligence community, including former members, some of whom found employment at CNN. The channel usually takes intelligence assessments and opinions on face value, never asking for underlying evidence – which ostensibly can never be revealed to protect “sources and methods”.
Extending the same blanket of blind trust to a former health official, who allegedly “muzzled” his own agency to conform to the wishes of the administration he served, is not as common in the US mainstream media.
So, what is with CNN? Are they moving to the right, or are they attempting to actually debate two sides of an argument instead of just one side? They are in danger of lending some credibility to Trumpians. What would cause them to do that?
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This story is not news to any conservative; it's been obvious for a long time. It should be news to liberals, or Democrats, but if it isn't it says something very disturbing about them - the end justifies the means!
CNN staffer boasts to Project Veritas that network
peddled anti-Trump ‘propaganda’
By Mark Moore, NY Post
April 13, 2021 | 5:53pm
A CNN staffer admitted in a secretly recorded video that his network produced “propaganda” to oust former President Donald Trump during the 2020 presidential election — and bragged about their success.
Charlie Chester, a technical Director at the cable network, was filmed by Project Veritas during a series of fake Tinder dates as he explained how they “got Trump out” of office.
“Look what we did, we [CNN] got Trump out. I am 100 percent going to say it, and I 100 percent believe that if it wasn’t for CNN, I don’t know that Trump would have got voted out,” Chester said, adding that he came to work at CNN because he ”wanted to be a part of that.”
“Our focus was to get Trump out of office, right? Without saying it, that’s what it was.”
Chester explained how they overdramatized Trump health issues by bringing in medical experts.
“[Trump’s] hand was shaking or whatever, I think. We brought in so many medical people to all tell a story that was all speculation – that he was neurologically damaged, and he was losing it. He’s unfit to – you know – whatever. We were creating a story there that we didn’t know anything about. I think that’s propaganda,” he said.
Asked by the sleuth if he and CNN were concerned with Joe Biden’s health during the election, Chester said the network had that in mind.
“Showing him jogging is obviously deflection of his age and they’re [CNN] trying to make it like, ‘Oh, I’m healthy,'” Chester said.
The date asked: “What do you mean?”
Charlie Chester, a technical Director at CNN says the network was “creating a story there that we didn’t know anything about,” in regards to former President Donald Trump’s health issues.
AFP via Getty Images video 8:59
“We would always show shots of him [Biden] jogging and that [he’s] healthy, you know, and him in aviator shades. Like you paint him as a young geriatric,” Chester replied.
A source close to CNN said Project Veritas targeted Chester through the dating app Tinder because his profile mentioned he worked at CNN, according to Mediaite.
The Project Veritas employee, who was not identified and claimed to be a nurse, went on five dates wearing a wire, including the final one at a coffee shop in Chester’s neighborhood. It’s unclear when the dates took place.
Chester told his “date” he would be fine with it if Biden died, because he thought Vice President Kamala Harris is “f—ing real.”
“I had so many arguments about, like — my dad would be like, ‘You’re, you know, you’re voting in Kamala Harris because he’s going to die in the presidency,” Chester told the woman. “And I’m like, ‘He’s not going to f—ing die.’ But I’m OK with that. I’m OK with that. She probably could be a b—h in, like, a board meeting, and you’d hate her as a boss, but she’s f—ing real, and better than what we got regardless.”
Chester was asked if CNN covered Biden tripping as he walked up the stairs.
Charlie Chester, a technical Director at CNN, says he’s OK with President Joe Biden dying because Vice President Kamala Harris is “f—ing real.” Project Veritas
“But you talk about that briefly. You don’t make that a huge story,” he said.
CNN did not respond to requests for comment by The Post.
Biden was criticized during the late summer and early fall of 2020 for limiting public appearances as part of his safety precautions for the coronavirus pandemic.
He consulted with his campaign officials and participated in interviews from a studio he had constructed in the basement of his Wilmington, Del., home.
During one of the meetings with his “date,” Chester talked about how CNN also targeted anti-Trump voters by focusing on climate change, adding “fear sells.”
“I think there’s a COVID fatigue. So, like whenever a new story comes up, they’re [CNN’s] going to latch onto it. They’ve already announced in our office that once the public is — will be open to it — we’re going to start focusing mainly on climate,” Chester said.
“It’s going to be our [CNN’s] focus. Like our focus was to get Trump out of office, right? Without saying it, that’s what it was, right? So our next thing is going to be climate change awareness,” he added.
”What’s that look like?” Chester was asked.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure. I have a feeling that it’s going to be like, constantly showing videos of decline in ice, and weather warming up, and like the effects it’s having on the economy,” Chester said.
Asked who makes that decision, he said the “head of the network,” referring to Jeff Zucker.
“I imagine that he’s got his council and they’ve all like, discussed, like where they think,” he said, trailing off.
He then said the new focus would be on a ”pandemic-like story that we’ll beat to death, but that one’s got longevity.”
“Like there’s a definitive ending to the pandemic. It’ll taper off to a point that it’s not a problem anymore. Climate change can take years, so they’ll [CNN will] probably be able to milk that quite a bit,” he said.
What we need is a definite ending to CNN! Whether CNN's propaganda was obvious to Americans or not, it was definitely obvious to conservative Canadians because of its similarity to our national broadcaster - CBC.
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