Surprise! NPR Sting Video Deceptively Edited!

James O’Keefe’s NPR “sting video” has caused some major problems for the organization, but it turns out that it doesn’t quite present the entire truth. O’Keefe recently posted two hours of raw video from the exchange, and experts tell NPR that the 11-minute version contained many distortions. For example, when the fake donors joke that NPR stands for “National Palestinian Radio,” O’Keefe edited out Ron Schiller’s immediate response, which was to tell him that donations will not affect NPR’s coverage.

Schiller in fact reiterated that point over and over, hitting the point six times. Also edited out: Schiller says he grew up Republican, and when he says the party’s been “hijacked” by xenophobes, he’s explicitly quoting influential Republicans. “There was certainly a lot there for conservatives … to be bothered about,” says the editor of The Blaze, Glenn Beck’s conservative news site. “But we felt like that wasn’t the whole story.” But a senior NPR executive has replied by saying that though O'Keefe's editing was clearly biased, "egregious comments were made that were not distorted, doctored, or fundamentally misrepresented."