Political activist James O'Keefe leaks tapes 'exposing' CNN leftist bias

Updated

Conservative political activist James O'Keefe has released what he says are "hundreds of hours" of secretly recorded audio that was obtained from a CNN Atlanta newsroom in 2009.

According to O'Keefe's website, Project Veritas, raw audio recorded by an anonymous source inside the CNN newsroom, identified as "Miss X," reveals the news organization's intentional effort to misrepresent "of polling data."

O'Keefe's website says that CNN staff skewed polls with an anti-Republican bias by knowingly pulling outdated polling numbers.

Meet the man behind the CNN leaks: James O'Keefe

O'Keefe has used undercover tactics -- at times concealing his identity and using hidden camera -- to target Democratic groups and other liberal causes in the past, discussed the alleged CNN leaks in live interview aired on Twitter Thursday morning.

The right-wing provocateur also is offering a reward of $10,000 to potential informants within the media industry who witness "corruption, malfeasance and wrongdoing."

In one clip, Richard Griffiths, a vice president at the network, says it is a duty of journalists to poke at the "comfortable."

"Aid the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. To a degree, right?" he says in the clip. "Is that not part of the traditional role of a journalist? It's actually one of the things I can be most proud of as a journalist."

Another clip features an online editor saying "there is no debate" over the facts of climate change.

But many of the hours have video have yet to analyzed, and Project Veritas is asking others for help "transcribing, investigating and connecting the dots on these 200+ hours of audio" in order to expose the "media malfeasance within CNN."

"I want to start exposing the media and their flaws," O'Keefe said on his Twitter profile. "This is the beginning of the end for the [mainstream media]. And it starts today."

SEE ALSO: Conservative activist James O'Keefe Faces defamation lawsuit

In an interview with CNN released a day before he published what he dubbed "CNN Leaks," he said he wanted to force the media to be held to a higher standard.

"We think our media needs to be held to account, and CNN is kind of the leader of that. CNN has a very important role as an arbiter of news," he said.

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