(Ryan Gravatt / Wikipedia)

The ACORN video was a fake. The Shirley Sherrod video was a fake. So why should anyone be surprised to find that the NPR video is also a fake? James O'Keefe has absolutely no interest in the truth. Instead, his well-funded hit machine has only one purpose: to distort and manufacture controversy.

A closer look at his most recent video shows that the NPR hit piece includes lies of both omission and commission. At many points in the raw footage, former NPR fundraiser Ron Schiller can be seen rejecting attempts by the fake Muslims to buy favorable coverage. Instead, Schiller makes it clear that NPR's coverage is not for sale.

Tompkins also says that O'Keefe's edited tape ignores the fact that Schiller said "six times ... over and over and over again" that donors cannot buy the kind of coverage they want on NPR.

One "big warning flag" Tompkins saw in the shorter tape was the way it made it appear that Schiller had laughed and commented "really, that's what they said?" after being told that the fake Muslim group advocates for sharia law. In fact, the longer tape shows that Schiller made that comment during an "innocuous exchange" that had nothing to do with the supposed group's position on sharia law, David reports.

None of this material made the tape. Neither did several complimentary or thoughtful things that Schiller said about Republicans and conservatives. Unable to get Schiller to say what he wanted, O'Keefe resorted to creating statements in the best traditions of comedy sketches -- he stitched an answer to one question onto a completely different question.That "innocuous exchange"? It's actually fromin the conversation. O'Keefe didn't just chop minutes out of the interview, he cut, copied, pasted, and rearranged the video to make Schiller into the parody of an NPR executive that the right expected.

The real scandal here isn't anything that Schiller said, it's that anyone treats O'Keefe and his video sausage grinding seriously. And that NPR, like the Obama administration in the last round of this unmitigated, bald-faced manipulation, reacts as if anything O'Keefe is producing can be trusted.

There may be no clearer marker of media's decline than in their treating O'Keefe as a legitimate source. Like Scott Walker's actions against the unions in Wisconsin, O'Keefe isn't out there to find the truth. He's out there to smash anyone not part of the conservative club, and if what that takes is an unending stream of sewage... he has no problem with that.

He's not a muckraker. He's a muck maker.

