[Video still shows purported exterior of Hasson's home]
Right-leaning activist James O'Keefe has turned his undercover camera on Publisher Janet Hasson and other Journal News employees in another rebuke of the paper's publication last month of names and addresses of handgun permit holders in two N.Y. counties.
He and and his supporters posed as an anti-gun group, Citizens Against Senseless Violence, that tried to persuade homeowners to place signs in front of their houses indicating their homes were gun-free. Watch the video on YouTube.
In addition to several people described as Journal News employees, they also caught on camera journalists with New Jersey's Star Ledger. And they attempted to reach U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder at home in Washington before being rebuffed by a police officer.
In Hasson's case, a man identified as her husband at about minute 5:00 in the video turns aside O'Keefe's group.
It's unclear when the video was produced. It was uploaded today to O'Keefe's YouTube site, where it has now been viewed more than 300 times. Some of his other 68 videos have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times each, however.
O'Keefe targeted ACORN
O'Keefe, 28, gained national attention for his release of video recordings of workers at ACORN offices in 2009; his arrest in early 2010 at the office of U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu in a failed attempt to record staff conversations, and release of videos of NPR executives in 2011.
Other critics have posted the home addresses and phone numbers of Hasson, Gannett CEO Gracia Martore and other Journal News employees.
Also, a group supporting gun owners has organized a boycott of companies advertising in Gannett publications. And a New York state senator is seeking an exemption for gun permit information from the open-records laws the newspaper used to obtain the names and addresses in the first place.
In response, the Journal News has hired private armed guards for the homes of Hasson and some other employees. In O'Keefe's video, the man described as her husband points to one such guard as evidence that she feels threatened.
Ambush?
ReplyDeleteThat description seems a bit harsh considering the target of O’Keefe’s interest were professional journalists who arguably ambushed law abiding citizens for no other reason than their current right to legally own a handgun.
And the paper has a legal right to publish public information that anybody could look up any time they wanted.
DeleteYou miss the point, though thanks for playing.
DeleteWhat I got out of the video is that the "victims" all seemed to cherish their "privacy". Something their companies routinely deny to "everyone else".
ReplyDeleteIt's different when the shoe is on the other foot.
ReplyDeleteYou meant: The Project Veritas investigative reporters went to the MSLSD Asshole's house.
ReplyDeleteGotta work on your noun placement, lib.
They are assholes...if they came to my house I would have set my two German shepherds on them and laughed as they screamed bloody murder down the street.
ReplyDeleteI think people should continue to harass journalists as long as they think it is ok to publish "lists" of citizens that they want to single out for politically disagreeing with them.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree. They published the list to make legal gun owners to further their anti-gun cause.
DeleteNot to excuse the Journal News, far from it, but I don't believe they had a specific agenda in mind when they put the map on their site....And that's the problem - no thought, no consideration, limited oversight and a total lack of reasoning power.
ReplyDeleteUltimately this falls in the lap of the lame brain editors and handgun-owning reporter. Idiots!!
I agree. Obtaining a public database should the beginning of researching a potential story. Here's a good perspective:
Deletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/14/business/media/guns-maps-and-disturbing-data.html?ref=davidcarr
Assholes doesn't even start to describe these morons. I mean, I guess you could argue that the executive editor and publisher are fair game. But the mother of a reporter who had nothing to do with the gun story? The spouse of an editor who had equally nothing to do with the story? Come on. If the guy with the concealed gun whose wife was on the list by mistake had shot every one of them, he would have been justified. IMHO
ReplyDeleteNOW you are concerned about innocent people being harassed?
DeleteTwo wrongs don't make a right, but maybe somebody at the Journal News should have thought about that in the first place!
Westchester cops stage Journal News protest:
ReplyDeletehttp://whiteplains.dailyvoice.com/news/police-group-says-pistol-permit-map-puts-cops-danger
Regardless, it make no sense. What journalist would put up a politicized sign on their yard?
ReplyDeleteThe ones in Wisconsin would probably be ok with it....
DeleteYou betcha. Although my spouse always puts the sign out.
DeleteI'd think twice before using anything from James O'Keefe. This alleged "conservative videographer" is a dirty tricks artist doing stuff worthy of the White House "plumbers".
ReplyDeleteIn fact, O'Keefe was arrested in Louisiana on wiretapping charges for breaking into a US senator's office.
Dirty tricks Everett?
DeleteFunny as his efforts exposed ACORN's dirty tricks for the fraud it was. He exposed Team Obama staffers for helping people vote more than once, including how he could have easily voted as Eric Holder and more. And, now, he exposed the hypocrisy of the Journal News's leadership who apparently takes issue with guns, yet employs "hired guns" for many of the same reasons citizens have bought them since this nation's founding.
O'Keefe may not be perfect, but his work exposes truths your lot obviously would choose to ignore, work that isn't that dissimilar that what made 60 Minutes.
New York’s new gun bill has a "Journal News" clause...
ReplyDeleteNames and addresses of pistol permit holders can no longer be requested by reporters under New York's Freedom Of Information Law, let alone published.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/01/cuomo-gun-bill-includes-journal-news-clause-154259.html?hp=r5
It couldn't happen to a more deserving group of propagandists pushing their agenda on the public. The Journal News is in it's death throes, as is the rest of print newspapers. As soon as the Greatest Generation dies off....pfff, there goes 40% of your circulation. To the tool who would led his German Shepherds loose-they would own your house-I hope that refrigerator box under the highway is cozy
ReplyDelete40&??? It's more like 90%. Anyone under 40 looks at the Journal News like it's a foreign object. Wait, now after the gun chart fiasco, a lot of folks over 40 look at it that way too.
DeleteA co-worker told me yesterday that his family and three other families on his block who subscribed to the print edition of the Journal News have canceled their subscriptions since the gun map.
Yes, I watched the video, and the first thing that struck me was the fact that apparently, no one who works at the Westchester Journal News lives in Westchester.
DeleteMust not be "upscale" enough for them.
Secondly, OF COURSE those at the News Journal who orchestrated this Dec. 23rd story had an agenda. How would anyone with a brain not accept that this story, even as just a cold, database journalism piece, wasn't coming from a perspective of being anti-gun?
Of course those at the paper were anti-gun... at least anti-gun for the great unwashed rabble they feel so superior to.
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ReplyDeletedoes anyone know how much revenue they've lost as a result of this stunt? is it published anywhere?
ReplyDeleteI've been getting e-mails from friends and family around the country who are getting these notices posting home addresses and phone numbers of top Crystal Palace suits. Word is indeed getting around.
ReplyDeleteNewsday reported yesterday that another of the homes listed on the Journal's map was robbed of cash, jewelry and guns. Of course, the politically correct police commissioner says it is "premature" to connect the burglary to the new story.
ReplyDeleteAt what point did irresponsible jerks start calling themselves "journalists" and getting by with it? Answer: About the same time journalists lost the respect of the public at large.