hidden camera news stories on Newser

Meet Lila Rose, Behind Planned Parenthood Sting

John Johnson — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:42:56 CST

The woman behind the Planned Parenthood sting that resulted in an employee getting fired is a 22-year-old anti-abortion activist named Lila Rose. She's made headlines before , but nothing to this extent, and it's a safe bet we'll be hearing more from the founder of the group Live Action, writes Libby...

Erin Andrews' Peeping Tom to Plead Guilty

John Johnson — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:34:44 CST

The man charged with snooping on ESPN's Erin Andrews and trying to sell the nude footage has agreed to plead guilty. Michael Barrett, 48, faces five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for interstate stalking, reports the Chicago Tribune . "He does accept full responsibility for his conduct," said...

Stingers Release Philly ACORN Video

Kevin Spak — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:00:14 CDT

The ACORN stingers have released another video, this time of their visit to the Philadelphia location—where, ACORN has until now insisted, they were kicked out. In the new, edited video, James O’Keefe says they weren’t kicked out, but instead sat for more than half an hour with an office...

ACORN Chief Blames Everyone But ACORN

Kevin Spak — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:00:00 CDT

ACORN chief Bertha Lewis wasn’t in the mood to apologize at the National Press Club yesterday. For anything. Not for the internal ACORN review showing that $5 million had been embezzled from the group, rather than the previously alleged $1 million (“This is speculation, completely false”), not the voter registrations...

FBI Arrests Erin Andrews' Alleged Peeping Tom

John Johnson — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 09:27:06 CDT

It looks like Erin Andrews' peeping tom has been caught. FBI agents arrested a Chicago man at O'Hare airport last night and accused him of making nude videos of the ESPN reporter after altering peepholes in two hotel rooms. He tried to sell them to TMZ, then posted clips online,...

ACORN Video Sting a Lesson in New Journalism

John Johnson — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:50:42 CDT

Andrew Breitbart may have an ideological ax to grind, but so what? The undercover ACORN videos he's posted illustrate a significant strength of 21st-century American journalism, writes Jack Shafer: "It will accept contributions from everybody from amateurs to entertainers (I'm looking at you, Jon Stewart) to gadflies to billionaires to...

ACORN Sues Creators of Sting Video

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:21:16 CDT

ACORN is suing the makers of a hidden-camera video that showed employees of its Baltimore office giving tax advice to a man and woman posing as a pimp and prostitute. The liberal group contends that the audio portion of the video was obtained illegally because Maryland requires two-party consent to...

ACORN Sting Raises Media Ethics Questions

Evann Gastaldo — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:35:49 CDT

“You've got to give James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles credit for abundant chutzpah and guile,” writes James Rainey in the Los Angeles Times . The pair’s hidden camera ACORN takedown “likely will do for guerrilla video what Ashton Kutcher did for Twitter—popularize and expand the form.” But Giles and O’Keefe...

ACORN Takedown Campaign Overblown, Misguided

Kevin Spak — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:50:14 CDT

The conservative campaign against ACORN—which has now, thanks to a few video “sting” operations, lost its federal funding—is built on an outrageous set of exaggerations and falsehoods, writes Joe Conason for Salon. “No doubt it was fun to dupe a few morons into providing tax advice to a...