On Wednesday night’s Colbert Report, conservative auteur and would-be Bizarro Captain Stubing James O’Keefe came perilously close to ensnaring host Stephen Colbert into his latest sting, an email effort to defer the cost of his so-called NPR sting video through online donations. Colbert saw through the plea as a ruse to associate himself with an unsavory criminal element, but didn’t ask the obvious question: how did O’Keefe compose a five page fundraising email to pay for an NPR video, and not offer his donors a frickin’ tote bag?

Ex-NPR CEO Vivian Schiller has made her first public remarks since her ouster, telling the International Women’s Media Foundation in Washington D.C. that she’s “not done” with a career in media. “I certainly plan to stay in journalism.”

Schiller resigned this month in the messy aftermath of a video “sting operation” conducted by James O’Keefe, which caught two NPR executives on hidden camera making critical comments about the Tea Party.

Steve Inskeep, host of NPR’s Morning Edition, took to the Wall Street Journal in an attempt to clear up a common misconception about NPR: That most of its audience leans to the left. In fact, Inskeep says, most of the media platform’s radio listeners identify as “middle of the road” or “conservative.”

James O’Keefe, the self-described investigative journalist behind the NPR sting video, appeared on Reliable Sources and told Howard Kurtz that he was motivated to look into NPR after they improperly handled the firing of former contributor Juan Williams. Kurtz questioned whether O’Keefe’s journalism tactics were unethical, but O’Keefe argued his form of investigative reporting was necessary to seek and find the truth.

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, both of whom work / have worked for Public Affairs Television, joined together to write a post for the Huffington Post, defending NPR against “another assault from the its long-time nemesis — the right-wing machine.” Unless you’ve been flying idly through the Milky Way with a goddess or two in tow, you’re likely aware of the undercover video, posted by conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe‘s Project Veritas, showing former NPR executive Ron Schiller making negative, and highly unprofessional, remarks about Tea Party members and the Republican party.

Yesterday, an in depth analysis was done on the NPR sting video from James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas group. By comparing the unedited footage with the version widely circulated, the analysis concluded that that Project Veritas’ editing of the tapes was “questionable” and “deceptive” enough to be “unethical” by journalism standpoints. This really shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who’s followed O’Keefe and the other “investigative journalists” he’s inspired from either political ideology. What is surprising, however, is who did the video analysis. It was completed by The Blaze, the news and opinion site founded by Glenn Beck.

Regular visitors to the Huffington Post have quite a surprise waiting for them on the homepage: the debut of the site’s newest contributor, right-wing web proprietor Andrew Breitbart. Yes, that Andrew Breitbart. While Breitbart had been involved in the creation of the site, he had yet to procure a byline. But now he has taken his battle to “fight back against the left and its accomplices in the mainstream media” straight to their home turf– and if commenters are any indication, he is receiving a rather warm welcome.

Let’s face it– liberals are going through a bit of a rough patch. With President Obama resuming military trials in Guantánamo and NPR in complete disarray, Jon Stewart wanted to “pour one out” for the “liberal homies” down on themselves for the bad day. And by “one,” he means a handcrafted pot of homemade gourmet salad dressing– right onto his lap.

Piers Morgan is turning out to have a knack for uniting otherwise natural enemies. To discuss the current mess at NPR prompted by comments former NPR employee Ron Schiller made about the Tea Party being racist, Morgan got NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard to share airtime with James O’Keefe mentor Andrew Breitbart, and while their rhetorical paths did not cross, they both gave Morgan some important insight into the story.

It’s rare to find a segment where Sean Hannity is having a hard time getting a word in, but Ann Coulter made it tough for him tonight as she railed against, of all people, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker for, among other things, failing to be on television “every night” and getting prank-called by a fake David Koch. While her general line of attack was “Chris Christie would have done it differently,” Coulter cited polls showing Walker’s popularity dropping significantly since the union wars.

The New York Times has confirmed with executives at PBS that they too were tricked into having lunch with some of James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas flunkies. This, of course, means that, like with NPR, they were presumably video taped in secret. So, if you woke up this morning desperately hoping that you could, one day, discover what the senior vice president for development at PBS has to say during lunch conversations with potential donors, then you could be in luck! Hoorah!

Cokie Roberts made an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to discuss the undercover video produced by James O’Keefe‘s Project Veritas, showing a former NPR executive making several negative and dismissive comments about Tea Party members.

At last year’s CPAC convention, Andrew Breitbart and I had a much-publicized dustup over conservative dress-up artiste James O’Keefe (he of the undercover NPR “sting” video), concerning the racial overtones of O’Keefe’s choice to wear a pimp costume in the intro to his ACORN videos. That encounter didn’t go so well, but this year’s CPAC offered a fresh chance to discuss the issue. During a long lunch with Breitbart, liberal filmmaker Lee Stranahan, and liberal blogger Mike Stark, I finally got an answer to my question.

Yesterday a secretly recorded video tape was released on the Internet that depicted NPR executives touting liberals while bashing conservatives and Tea Partiers. While the executives on tape have since resigned, it was only a matter of time until the last personality caught in an NPR controversy was asked to opine on this controversy, and its fair to say that Juan Williams did not hold back.

Conservative activist James O’Keefe is making headlines with his undercover video of NPR executives candidly discussing the Tea Party, federal funding of their organization, and other topics. Some have speculated that, because O’Keefe broke the story on The Daily Caller, rather than via O’Keefe mentor and conservative media giant Andrew Breitbart’s “Big” sites, there must be a rift between the two. In exclusive remarks to Mediaite, Breitbart denied any such rift, saying he’s “gleeful” for the attention O’Keefe’s videos are getting.

Most of the early reporting on the so-called “sting” of NPR executives by operatives of James O’Keefe‘s “Project Veritas” identify O’Keefe as the person behind the ACORN videos, describing him as a “conservative activist,” “master of the video sting,” even a scare-quoted “investigative journalist,” and while some reports included references to O’Keefe’s arrest for an incident at Sen. Mary Landrieu‘s office, all but one omitted any mention of O’Keefe’s plot to strand a female reporter on a boat loaded with sex toys and hidden cameras.

USA Today is reporting that Mark Meckler, the national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots (one of the largest groups within the Tea Party movement) points out that, in the video, Schiller “candidly admits” that NPR does not need federal funding before calling NPR a “clearly biased news organization that is out of touch with Americans.”

NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik has shared, via Twitter, NPR’s response to the newly-released undercover video showing former NPR senior executive Ron Schiller making disparaging comments about the Tea Party movement. Schiller’s comments – which included referring to Tea Party members as “xenophobic” and “gun-toting” – were shared at a meeting with two representatives from a fictional group that described themselves as having been founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The meeting was set up and filmed by controversial conservative activist James O’Keefe, who has made a name for himself by creating similar “sting videos.”

Another day, another James O’Keefe video. The conservative activist, who gained notoriety after releasing edited video footage showing wrongdoing among low-level ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) employees, has now turned his lens on NPR. In the footage, a man purported to be former NPR senior executive Ron Schiller and a woman described as Betsy Liley, the media outlet’s director of institutional giving, are shown meeting with two individuals posing as members of a fabricated organization called the “Muslim Education Action Center.”

The New Year is here, and with it, the annual exercise in futility that is the New Year’s Resolution. As you stare into the abyss of another 365 days in which to improve yourself, it might help you to know that the figures who make Mediaite go ’round have some things to work on, too. Here’s what we think some of them are saying into the mirror this morning.

So, before you try to shake off that Cold Duck and Four Loko hangover and blearily search for a gym membership you can get out of when you get tired of it after 3 sessions, why not check out our list  of New Year’s Resolutions for Everyone Else?

CNN’s Abbie Boudreau has left the network and is joining ABC News as an LA based correspondent. The news was first reported by Enterprise Report.

Boudreau was in the media news recently on CNN. Let’s connect the dots between her and Big sites founder Andrew Breitbart.

Earlier today, James O’Keefe released a statement in which he expanded upon his initial denial that he planned to sexually humiliate CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau, a denial that is belied by additional evidence presented in Boudeau’s “Right on the Edge” documentary. In addition to the “CNN Caper” document that outlined the plan, Boudreau also released emails and telephone recordings that corroborated key elements of the plot.

We reached out to Boudreau to see if she had a reaction to O’Keefe’s statement. Her response was brief and to the point:

Since the story of conservative ACORN slayer James O’Keefe‘s attempt to sexually humiliate CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau broke on Wednesday, ever-more disturbing details have emerged. Saturday night’s airing of Right on the Edge, the Boudreau documentary about which she and O’keefe were supposed to meet, fills in a few more blanks, and reveals just how monumental a screwup this was for O’Keefe.

It was a week straight out of a media critic’s dreams, or a surrealist filmmaker’s screenplay: Rahm Emanuel‘s tenancy issues, James O’Keefe‘s “palace of pleasure,” and Rick Sanchez‘s spontaneous combustion. With so much of import going on in the world, makes sense that the media mostly missed the fact that the Ecuadorian police force tear-gassed President Rafael Correa and quarantined him in a hospital as his shouted “kill me! kill me!”

Conservative reaction to James O’Keefe‘s alleged plot to sexually humiliate CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau has been almost uniformly harsh. Until now, aside from a few tangential tweets, O’Keefe mentor and benefactor Andrew Breitbart has been silent on the matter. Those waiting to take their cues from the influential conservative media figure can now let the pigeons loose, as Breitbart has released a statement in which he praises Boudreau, and calls O’Keefe’s plot “patently gross and offensive.”