At
the beginning of the interview, Sanchez stated that O'Keefe "that took
down a liberal group, ACORN, by ambushing them and presenting them in an
unfair light after his video was shown endless times on Fox News."
Unfair light? The "liberal group," as the anchor correctly describe
them, had already been under investigation for illegal activity. As
CNN itself reported in October 2008,
authorities in Nevada conducted a raid on the organization's
headquarters in Las Vegas as part of an investigation into voter
registration fraud (though anchor Kiran Chetry referred to ACORN as
merely a "
non-profit group"). Speaking of unfair, how about the time Sanchez
highlighted an unsubstantiated quote of Rush Limbaugh?
The
CNN anchor only directly mentioned his competitor by name during the
segment during the beginning, but one of his later questions led to
Boudreau mentioning them and their possible involvement. Thirty-three
minutes into the hour, Sanchez brought up the document that O'Keefe and
one of his collaborators made in the process of planning their "punk" of
the CNN correspondent, which was subsequently leaked to the network.
Though the 13-page document apparently didn't specifically mention Fox
News, Boudreau named them as one of their possible "allies" in the
planned stunt:
SANCHEZ: Let's go to the second part of
the document. In the document- and there we're seeing James O'Keefe- he-
does the document explain why he had planned to do this? What his M.O.
was for us here as a network at CNN?
BOUDREAU: Okay, and just to
be clear, this document- at the very beginning of the document, it says
written by- and it's one of James' mentors and one of his fellow
activists- under activist, it lists James' name. Now, James would have
been the person who acted out this entire punk. James has said in a
statement that he knows about the document, but I'll just go ahead and
read his e-mail to us-
SANCHEZ: Okay.
BOUDREAU: It says,
'That is not my work product. When it was sent to me, I immediately
found certain elements highly objectionable and inappropriate, and did
not consider them for one minute following it.' But our reporting will
show- and we'll reveal all the details in our documentary- that appears
not to be true.
SANCHEZ: So he was- at least your reporting seems to indicate that he was in on it.
BOUDREAU: Yes. You asked about the first part-
SANCHEZ:
Okay. Yes. In on what? What was the M.O.? What did they plan to do with
this video they're going to have on you and him inside this boat?
BOUDREAU: Okay. Well, that is unclear. But that was all in the second part of the document.
SANCHEZ: Right.
BOUDREAU: The
first part of the document that you are asking about is about how to
punk CNN into reporting a false story, either about Sarah Palin or about
the Tea Party movement. And what they would then do is give their
allies or their 'friendly's,' as they called them in the document, which
would be FOX News-
SANCHEZ: Right.
BOUDREAU: A
heads-up, that CNN is about to report a fake story so that they could-
quote, 'pounce on CNN and undercut CNN's credibility'- and that was the
first part of the document. It was very detailed about how that plan was
supposed to go down.
SANCHEZ: That's a heck of a story.
So
it's purely speculation of both Boudreau and Sanchez's part that Fox
News might have played any role in this, purely because his first and
most infamous set of videos on ACORN aired multiple times on their
competitor. It's just another example of the CNN's anchor's continuing
vendetta against the network, where he has
questioned their legitimacy as a news organization, or slammed them as "
way, way, way to the right" or "
the voice of the Republican Party."
-Matthew Balan is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here.
