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Notes -
"This is coming from a group of hucksters that have been proven to be lying multiple times," and then link to the various takedowns. Sure, it won't convince right-wing entertainers on Twitter or anti-vax folks, but Pfizer doesn't care about that.
That will in all likelihood be the response, but what specifically has Veritas lied about?
It depends on what you consider a "lie". Two potential examples come to mind with the first being an ACORN lawyer, Juan Carlos Vera, who took down information about the (fake) sex trafficking coming in through Tijuana and immediately reported it to law enforcement. Even after this information came out, O'Keefe still kept implying that Vera was indeed an enthusiastic participant in sex trafficking. The second example comes from the NPR sting, where Veritas used deceptive editing to imply that NPR executives were very eager to accept a $5 million donation from a Sharia group in exchange for coverage input.
Huh?
The edited Veritas video portrays the same thing as the unedited Veritas video: NPR exec clearly states that they won't let a donation influence their coverage, but also NPR exec is totally sympathetic with and yes-manning this guy. That's even visible in the takedown video you linked.
Maybe I overlooked something, but where does the edited Veritas video show the NPR exec stating they won't let a donation influence their coverage?
Around 9 minutes in: https://www.projectveritas.com/video/npr-muslim-brotherhood-investigation-part-i/
The point Veritas is conveying with this part of the video is not at all that NPR will shade their coverage - that's something your video is claiming via a deceptive edit. The actual point Veritas is trying to make is very clear since they print it at the top of the screen in big capital letters:
Begin my transcript of the Veritas video itself:
Sharia guy: "I'm not too upset about maybe a little bit less Jew influence of money into NPR. The Zionist coverage is quite substantial elsewhere"
NPR guy: "I don't actually find it at NPR."
Sharia guy: "What, exactly?"
NPR guy: "The zionist or pro-Israel even among funders. No. I mean it's there in those who own newspapers obviously but no one owns NPR. I don't find it."
Paraphrased capital letters above caption, i.e. what Veritas wants you to notice: "JEWS OWN THE NEWSPAPERS OBVIOUSLY"
Sharia guy: "I just think what Israel does I don't think can be excused, frequently, so I'm glad to hear this."
NPR guy: "Even one of our biggest funders who you'll hear on air, the American Jewish World Service, may not agree with us. I visited with them recently. They may not agree with what we put on the air but they find us important to them. And sometimes it's not easy to hear what we have to say and what our reporters think, but they still think NPR is important to support. Right because I think they are really looking for a fair point of view and many Jewish organizations are not."
Paraphrased capital letters: "MANY JEWISH ORGS NOT LOOKING FOR A FAIR POINT OF VIEW"
Your anti-Veritas video edited that part out.
NPR guy: "Frankly, I'm sure there are Muslim organizations that are not looking for a fair point of view. They're looking for a very particular point of view and that's fine." (I wonder - is he about to draw a parallel to the thing he said a few seconds ago?)
Muslim guy interrupting: "We're not one of them."
NPR exec: "I'm gathering that you're not, actually."
The paraphrased capital letters clearly indicate what Veritas wants you to take away: NPR guy will say antisemitic things for the chance at a donation, but they won't bias their coverage for donations from Jews or <didn't get to finish that thought because this potential donation doesn't want biased coverage>.
And if you watch the full video you get the broader point being made: NPR guy hates the tea party and white Republicans, but he's totally cool with Muslim Brotherhood guy and admits Jews control the newspapers.
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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