A New York Times staffer admits the newspaper slants news coverage against President Trump, according to a newly released video report from James O'Keefe's Project Veritas.
The video is part of O'Keefe's American Pravda series that began this year with several reports about CNN, including one in which Jimmy Carr, an associate producer for the "New Day" morning program, lambasted the president. Carr said: "We all recognize he is a clown, that he is hilariously unqualified for this, he's really bad at this and that he does not have America's best interests. We recognized he's just f------ crazy."
The new video reveals Nick Dudich, the audience strategy editor for NYT Video, explaining how the Times slants Trump news on the front page.
"Oh, we always do," he said.
The former staffer for the campaigns of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama claims on the video to be a "gatekeeper" for videos at the Times: "My imprint is on every video we do."
And he claims his job is to slant the news.
"That's why I'm here," he said on the video.
Hear his comments (Editor's Note: Be forewarned of highly offensive language in the video):
Hours after the video was released, Clifford Levy, Times spokesman, released a statement, "Based on what we've seen in the Project Veritas video, it appears that a recent hire in a junior position violated our ethical standards and misrepresented his role. In his role at The Times, he was responsible for posting already published video on other platforms and was never involved in the creation or editing of Times videos. We are reviewing the situation now."
Project Veritas points out that the New York Times ethics handbook explains, "Journalists … must do nothing that might raise questions about their professional neutrality or that of The Times."
O'Keefe's organization reports Dudich was caught on a hidden camera "boasting of his lack of journalistic ethics."
Dudich explains how to target Trump, "I'd target his businesses, his dumb f--- of a son, Donald Jr., and Eric. ...
"Target that. Get people to boycott going to his hotels. Boycott. ... So a lot of the Trump brands, if you can ruin the Trump brand and you put pressure on his business and you start investigating his business and you start shutting it down, or they're hacking or other things. He cares about his business more than he cares about being president. He would resign. Or he'd lash out and do something incredibly illegal, which he would have to."
O'Keefe's group reported that before working at the Times, Dudich was employed on both Obama and Clinton campaigns, and in 2016 he was recruited by the Clinton campaign.
"So I have that background, so when Clinton in 2016 ... they needed a volunteer strategist to do video ... well, they needed someone to help them do video, and how to make it heartfelt, for Clinton," he said.
But he had to leave a job at Fusion ABC and take a job at Upworthy "where I wasn't deemed a journalist" so he could do the political work.
Project Veritas also reported "bizarre" claims by Dudich, including that he was former FBI director James Comey's godson and that he was part of antifa and beat up neo-Nazis for the FBI.
O'Keefe's conclusion?
"Nick Dudich lies. And he's a gatekeeper at the New York Times," O'Keefe said. "And that fact should be worrisome to the bosses at the paper of record. Who else are they letting spread misinformation in their name?"
In an earlier segment of the American Pravda series, Carr said American voters are "stupid as s---."
The video: (Be warned of offensive language):
Carr continued, regarding Trump: "This is a man who's not actually a Republican. He's not actually a Republican. He just adopted that because that was the party he thought he could win in. He doesn't believe anything that these people believe. The man's on this third wife. I guarantee you he's paid for abortions. He doesn't give a s--- about abortion. He doesn't care about gay marriage. He doesn't even really care about the budget."
And he claims he's not alone in his opinions: "Ninety percent of us are on board with just the fact that he's crazy."
The Carr video was the third in the Project Veritas series.
In No. 2, Van Jones, former President Obama's onetime "czar" on green jobs and a longtime left-wing commentator, activist and organizer, agreed with President Trump that the Russia scandal is "a big nothing burger."
The video clip shows Jones being approached on a street and stating in response to a question, "The Russian thing is just a big nothing burger."
He adds, "There's nothing there you can do."
The video (Be warned of offensive language):
Jones, one of CNN's highest-profile political commentators, previously attacked Trump over the "Putin relationship," Project Veritas pointed out.
Jones later responded that his comments were taken out of context.
"If you take any one line of my argument out of context, you can use it to pull off a hoax. That's what O’Keefe's minions did," Jones wrote in a CNN article.
In the video that opened the series, another CNN producer admitted the network's focus on allegations that Trump's election campaign colluded with Russia is mostly for ratings. The producer said the network's mostly liberal audience would not have put up with that kind of treatment of Obama.
The first video was of CNN producer John Bonifield, and his comments drew the attention of the White House.
Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: "There is a video circulating now. Whether it is accurate or not, I don't know, but I would encourage everybody in this room, and frankly, everybody across the country to take a look at it. I think if it is accurate, I think it's a disgrace to all of media, to all of journalism – we've been going on this Russia-Trump hoax for the better part of a year now with no evidence of anything."
O'Keefe's video of Bonifield shows him saying, "I think there are a lot of liberal CNN viewers who want to see Trump really get scrutinized."
The network later issued a statement that it stood by Bonifield.
The producer said in the video: "And I think if we would have behaved that way with President Obama, and scrutinized everything that he was doing with as much scrutiny as we applied to Donald Trump, I think our viewers would have been turned off.
"I think they would have felt like we were attacking him. I think our viewers right now, I'm not saying our viewers are super liberals, I think there's just a lot of them, and … Trump is good for business right now."
Project Veritas, famous for its undercover videos exposing media and political corruption, went to CNN's Atlanta headquarters for the conversations with Bonifield.
The CNN producer admitted there's no evidence to support the allegations of links between Trump's campaign and Russia.
"It's mostly bullsh-- right now, like, we don't have any big giant proof," he said. "I just feel like they don't really have it but they want to keep digging.
"And so I think the president is probably right to say, like, look, you are witch-hunting me," he continued. "Like, you have no smoking gun. You have no real proof."
He said CNN CEO Jeff Zucker praised the crew for its coverage of the climate-accord issue, but then said, "We're done with it, let's get back to Russia."
Explained Bonifield: "It's a business. People are like the media has an ethical … all the nice cutesy little ethics that used to get talked about in journalism school, you're just like, that's adorable. That's adorable.
"This is a business. Especially cable news. Cable news isn't the New York Times. It's not even like NBC News. … I mean, NBC News still gets 20 million viewers a night, cable news is getting a million."
He continued: "They got to do what they got to do to make their money, I think. And so I love the news business, but I'm very cynical about it and at the same time so are most of my colleagues."
Regarding Russia, he said, if there's was evidence somewhere, it would soon be known.
"The way these leaks happen, they'd leak it. It'd leak. If it was something really good, it would leak," he said.
See the video (beware off offensive language in the video):
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