How The Anti-Acorn Videos Grew From A Conservative Tree

Posted by | September 23, 2009 19:30 | Filed under: Top Stories


James O’Keefe III and Hannah Giles, the videographers who exposed wrongdoing at ACORN, didn’t just fall out of a tree one day.  They each had training at Washington institutions that train ideological conservative journalists.


Giles, a 20-year-old sophomore at Florida International University, spent the summer on a $1,200-a-month internship with the National Journalism Center, a training organization whose alumni include conservative commentator Ann Coulter. Immediately after graduating Rutgers University in 2006, O’Keefe, 25, was paid to set up magazines and newspapers on university campuses for the Leadership Institute, which recruits potential conservative public policy and media stars.

 

While O’Keefe and Giles claim that no one helped them conceive, execute, or finance their video project, they received help from a conservative infrastructure that helped their work go viral.


There’s no proof that a coordinated effort to commission the project, but O’Keefe and Giles did discuss it with several conservative activists starting at least a month before its Sept. 10 premiere. One key result of those discussions was phenomenal promotion.

 

The mastermind behind the release strategy was Andrew Breitbart — a Web impresario, Washington Times columnist and critic of Hollywood liberalism who was readying the launch of a new Web site, biggovernment.com.

 

Giles was a fan of O’Keefe’s activism before they met, which was the day before they made their first video.

 

She cited his work surreptitiously taping phone calls with staff at Planned Parenthood clinics, who entertained and, in some cases, accepted his proposition of giving money as long as it was used for black women to get abortions.

 

That maneuver resulted in O’Keefe being asked to leave the Leadership Institute.  He is now under contract to Breitbart’s website, and ACORN is suing them for “illegal videotaping.”

 

ACORN’s general counsel, Arthur Schwartz, said the acts of O’Keefe and Giles in making the hidden-camera taping were “clear violations of Maryland law.”

 

Giles is the daughter of pastor and Townhall columnist Doug Giles, whose recent columns include one calling Van Jones an “a$$hole”, and another stating that “liberal lawmakers love their sex freaks and hate Christian ministers.”

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Copyright 2009 Liberaland
By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.

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