The Daily Caller's Embarrassing O'Keefe Reporting

The Daily Caller's Matthew Boyle has been spearheading that publication's exclusive coverage of James O'Keefe's series of NPR videos, and he's back again this morning with a stenographic write-up of the latest O'Keefe offering.

Under the headline: “New O'Keefe tape shows George Soros has donated to NPR before last year,” Boyle writes:

In conservative James O'Keefe's Project Veritas's third major National Public Radio (NPR) sting tape release, Betsy Liley, the taxpayer-funded radio network's director of institutional giving is heard saying controversial left-wing billionaire George Soros has donated to the organization before last October's $1.8 million gift.

Shocking, right? Well, no -- NPR has publicized their Soros and Open Society funding, including it in press releases going back to 2000. This is easily obtained, publicly available information, and it completely undermines what O'Keefe claims is the big reveal of his video. It's the sort of information that a journalist -- or, at least, someone pretending to be a journalist -- would research before accepting O'Keefe's allegations at face value. It's clear that neither Boyle nor his editors took the time to fact-check O'Keefe's allegations. Or maybe they did and just didn't care.

The Daily Caller should update and correct Boyle's story, and then perhaps take a refresher course on basic due diligence.