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I really sincerely appreciate that you took the time to research this fairly. The transcripts you provide are accurate but I'm not sure how they're relevant to this point. The overarching insinuation is that NPR is biased towards Palestine/Muslims and against Israel/Jews, so it's neither notable nor surprising for the NPR execs to deny that Jewish funders affect the coverage. That's perfectly in line with the suspicion that NPR is heavily biased in favor of Palestine (which I don't think is at all unreasonable). The full context here would be to include all the times that NPR execs deny that any donor can influence coverage. The fact that Veritas excluded the six denials about all donors from the edited video but chose to include the laugh line about National Palestinian Radio appears to have been done deliberately in order to leave the viewer with the impression that their "donors don't affect coverage" line only applies in one direction.
This is another example of the deceptive editing. The full unedited Veritas video is 2 hours long and is still available here. At the 2:34 mark of the edited video, the NPR exec is portrayed as disclosing that he personally believes Republicans are intensely racist. The full video at the 33:30 mark shows him explicitly stating that he's relaying what someone else, a top Republican donor, believes. Maybe the NPR exec is lying and just using a fictitious sockpuppet to launder his own beliefs, but if that's the suspicion, why not let the audience decide instead of just editing the ambiguity out?
It seems odd that if PV is such a deceptive media organization, they consistently release the raw footage of their stories.
This is so completely unlike any other media organization, in the direction of transparency and, like, not being misleading that your criticism of the fact that they are implying something without directly misquoting the subject seems a bit misplaced. Don't you think it's pretty likely that all the other media organizations are doing that too, you just don't know about it because they don't release the unedited footage?
If you are going to discount stuff from PV because of their "track record of deceptive stories" or whatever, don't you think the bar needs to be a bit higher than "presents a bite-sized story which flatters the (presumed) bias of their audience while releasing unedited transcripts at the same time"?
Like, this shit happened -- the NPR guy said what he said, and so did the Pfizer guy. PV didn't make anything up -- perhaps the sources themselves are unreliable, but at least we can evaluate the credibility of the sources. Unlike when the NYT quotes "sources close to Trump" (or "high up in the Republican party", etc) about basically anything.
I think releasing unedited footage should definitely happen more, and I already acknowledge this is a routine problem in other media outlets. The Katie Couric 'Under the Gun' example is the one that pissed me off the most, and this one from MSNBC trying their damndest not to let the audience know the guy openly-carrying an AR-15 outside of an Obama rally was black is probably the all-time most acrobatic example I can think of.
But Veritas has not been consistent with releasing unedited footage. I note this example above but when Wisconsin's GOP attorney general asked for the full unedited tapes of a Democrat operating talking about planning voter fraud, O'Keefe claimed to have complied but only provided edited segments (see pages 5 and 10 in their case report). I can understand being cagey about releasing unedited footage to the public at large, but can't think of a legitimate reason O'Keefe would withhold information from law enforcement (O'Keefe's excuses about not including parking lot portions etc are just not credible given his past videos).
[BTW to your credit @jfk, I previously believed that Veritas has not released any unedited footage since 2011. You pointed out enough examples to poke holes in that broad statement.]
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I guess we're just watching two different movies on the same screen. I did not get the "only applies in one direction" point from this at all.
The main point I took away is that NPR guy said multiple things that would - if coming from a Republican - be treated as ironclad evidence of antisemitism. Veritas highlighted negative statements about the Jews. Why didn't they highlight anything about biased coverage?
And why did your video choose to edit out the part of the short Veritas video where he said they didn't give biased coverage to other donors?
I mean yes, they could release a 2 hour long video instead of 10 minutes of highlights, most of which is boring. And they did (they always do). I feel like your complaint is simply that 10 minutes of highlights can't capture everything.
And then a short time later he attributes very similar views to himself (but not to NPR). "I'll talk personally, this is not where NPR is at, ...." So while perhaps they missed disclosing that one of the anti-Republican things he said was attributed to someone else, he said multiple similar things and attributed them to himself (but not NPR).
So let me ask some concrete questions:
Based on the Veritas video, I think he believes Republicans are racist. Do you think this is false and I've been fooled by Veritas?
Based on the Veritas video, I think that he personally - but not NPR - has significant negative feelings towards Republicans. Do you think that is false and I've been fooled by Veritas?
There's a an inherent challenge in discussing what is or isn't "misleading" because neither of our opinion will be conclusive. Before my last reply I (briefly) did try to look up what the contemporary conservative coverage about the NPR video was at the time, just to get a sense of what the main takeaways presented were. I gave up because archival searching is tedious and difficult, but I think that would be a good data point to see what message the video imparted on its audience.
It may be difficult but it's feasible to edit 2 hours down to 10 minutes while remaining authentic to the original material. Editing gives people a significant amount of leeway to artificially construct what message the audience walks away with and it's a big reason I generally avoid watching documentaries. The gold standard for me in this area would be to confirm that the person being edited agrees the edited version remains a fair and accurate representation of their statements. I recognize this may not always be a realistic option (namely because people will lie just because they're objecting to being exposed) but it seems feasible in most cases.
There's also the added issue that Veritas has not been consistent about releasing unedited versions of their sting videos. One notable example is from 2016 where a Democratic operative was apparently caught on video discussing how to commit voter fraud. This is and was something that caught the attention of law enforcement, but when Wisconsin's GOP attorney general asked for the full unedited tapes, O'Keefe claimed to have complied but only provided edited segments (see pages 5 and 10 in their case report and if you're not already fully exasperated by Timbah's videos there's additional context here).
The answer to both is that I don't know if it's false. I certainly think it's plausible and perhaps even likely, based solely on my operating stereotype of an NPR executive, but I wouldn't be convinced of this just from watching the edited footage unless I assumed it was telling me the full story (and you know my opinion on that).
I don't have an objection to editorializing, and if O'Keefe believed that the NPR exec was just laundering his disdain for Republicans by quoting a sock puppet, Veritas could just say so. They could have added a text disclaimer ("Note: he's referencing a conversation with a top-level donor but we think that's just a cover story") without adding to the length of the video. Had they done that I wouldn't have an objection. They didn't, likely because it would run counter to their cinéma vérité brand where only the footage does the talking.
I didn't have much trouble finding contemporaneous stuff. Here's what NPR thought the main takeaways were at the time:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/03/09/134358398/in-video-npr-exec-slams-tea-party-questions-need-for-federal-funds
https://www.npr.org/2011/03/09/134389342/vivian-schiller-ceo-of-npr-steps-down
"NPR's chief fundraising executive, Ron Schiller, was caught on tape criticizing conservatives and saying NPR would be better off without federal financial support. As NPR's David Folkenflik reports, his remarks were captured as part of a video sting at a time when NPR is under public assault."
Ron Schiller (NPR guy) says "I offer my sincere apology to those I offended."
Other orgs have a similar take:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ron-schiller-former-npr-f_n_832907 https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-leadership/post/was-npr-right-to-ask-vivian-schiller-to-resign/2011/03/04/ABT4uuP_blog.html https://www.foxnews.com/politics/schiller-forced-out-as-npr-president-following-hidden-camera-sting
Here's what a conservative news+comment site said about it: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2011/03/09/ron-schiller-wins-helen-thomas-annual-achievement-award-cair-approves/
Accusations of biased coverage aren't mentioned at all - just some talk about how offensive the guy was. And for background, part of the reason this was a big deal at the time is that Republicans (who controlled congress) wanted to defund NPR at the time. Getting an NPR exec admitting they don't need federal funds was a useful anti-federal funds argument.
The stuff about biased coverage seems to be a talking point invented much later.
I was unaware of this. I'll definitely downgrade my assessment of Veritas (to "not 100% scrupulous, but still better than any other news source") and always check if the full video is released.
Even if we assume I'm correct in that the biased coverage portion is indeed misleading, what you presented is compelling evidence that it was not at all one of the main takeaways of the video. I appreciate and applaud you for taking the time to look into the contemporaneous coverage. It would still be interesting to see if we could put our respective assessments to the test (show a random audience the portions about funding and ask them what impression they walk away with) but the video is too old to make sense to people now.
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