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O'Keefe Tells Hannity CNN Tapes Reveal Network Is 'Propaganda'

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  December 02, 2020 7:20 AM

Project Veritas’s James O’Keefe has been secretly recording CNN’s conference calls for two months and finally announced—live—that he was doing so to the network’s president, Jeff Zucker, on Tuesday. It was quite a moment if you haven’t already seen the tape. 

O’Keefe appeared on Fox News’ Sean Hannity Tuesday night to discuss more about what he heard during those months, how they plan to release the tapes, and whether he is concerned over legal threats by CNN. 

Hannity opened his segment with the Project Veritas founder by noting that O’Keefe has been sued many times over the undercover work he’s done and wondered if anyone has been successful. 

“No, Sean, we’ve won every single lawsuit at Project Veritas,” O’Keefe replied. “And I know they said, quote, this is CNN communications, legal experts say this may be a felony. We have legal experts at Project Veritas. And we think Jeff Zucker is just very mad and embarrassed here for what we have exposed.”

O’Keefe said the organization plans to release tapes every day, referring to it as a sort of "Advent calendar." He will be on with Hannity each night this week to discuss.

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His main takeaway from having listened in on the network's 9 a.m. conference calls for so long, however, is that CNN is not a news network, it is "propaganda." 

"This is something that doesn't shock people but confirms a lot of suspicions. To see the president of a media conglomerate barking orders at his reporters and journalists, telling them what to cover, what not to cover, that's not anything resembling journalism I know," O'Keefe said. "This is propaganda. ... This is manufacturing consent. And we’ve never actually seen it, fly on the wall. You can actually hear the president of the company instruct his vice president -- instruct his reporters what the narrative ought to be."

He feels the network should apologize to the American people.

"This is the farthest thing from journalism that I know. And I think that CNN owes an apology to the people. I mean, this is -- this is disgraceful," he said. 

On Tuesday evening Project Veritas released a tape of CNN's Jamie Gangel discussing how the network should cover President Trump’s contested election claims.