Daily Source Bias Check: Project Veritas

These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward conservative causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage conservative causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy. See all Right Bias sources.

• Overall, we rate Project Veritas Right Biased based on story selection that only favors the right and Mixed for factual reporting due to lack of sourcing and a few failed fact checks.

Detailed Report

Factual Reporting: MIXED
Country: USA
World Press Freedom Rank: USA 48/180

History

Founded in 2010, Project Veritas was created by James Edward O’Keefe III who is an American conservative political activist. He produces secretly recorded undercover audio and video encounters, some selectively edited to imply its subjects said things they did not, with figures and workers in academic, governmental and social service organizations, purporting to show abusive or allegedly illegal behavior by employees and/or representatives of those organizations. Project Veritas primarily targets liberals and liberal organizations.

Funded by / Ownership

Project Veritas is owned by James O’Keefe. Funding primarily comes from donations. However, most of these donations come from the Donor’s Trust. The purpose of the Donor’s Trust Fund is to “safeguard the intent of libertarian and conservative donors.” In other words, it allows the source to receive funds without disclosing who they come from. Needless to say, most funding for Project Veritas comes from conservative and libertarian organizations.

Analysis / Bias

In review, O’Keefe’s videos are edited in a way that makes them difficult to fact check.  Often his information is debunked, but it is too late as the information has already been watched by thousands or more. In general, the narrative created by O’Keefe, whether edited or not is to portray liberals in a negative light. Further, President Trump often sources Project Veritas, such as this: President Trump Thanks Project Veritas Tech Investigations at White House Social Media Summit. The fact that the President endorses them can mean different things to different people, we are just sharing the fact that he does endorse them and nothing more. In general, all stories on Project Veritas advance the conservative agenda, while denigrating the left.

A factual search reveals a few failed fact checks.

• “Money raised to help (Beto) O’Rourke get elected is being used to fund migrants. This is clearly breaking campaign finance laws.” – FALSE
• Website falsely claimed Twitter caught leaking private Trump messages to the Justice Department – FALSE

Overall, we rate Project Veritas Right Biased based on story selection that only favors the right and Mixed for factual reporting due to lack of sourcing and a few failed fact checks. (11/16/2016) Updated (D. Van Zandt 8/24/2019)

Source: https://www.projectveritas.com