Strange bedfellows

MORGAN: Andrew, let me turn to you. Is this kind of stunt fair game, do you think?

ANDREW BREITBART, AUTHOR, "RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION": Well, of course, it's fair game. It was a week and a half ago that CNN itself said of a prank that was done on Governor Scott Walker -- they named the prankster CNN's person of intrigue of the day. So the problem here is that James O'Keefe and many other people like Lila Rose are held to a different standard.

Often in the history of journalism you have people like Hunter Thompson, Paul Krazer, Abbie Hoffman, who have been outrageous in trying to get their points across and have used journalism to do so. And they have been given their own wing of the J schools because they have the politically correct left of center view.

James O'Keefe is despised by the liberal culture on -- by the coastal elites, you know, media that is based in New York. Media based in New York and Washington despite him and Lila Rose for their politics.

MORGAN: It's sort of a chicken and the egg, isn't it? This guy's opinions wouldn't have received wider airing if Mr. O'Keefe and his skulduggery hadn't been at work. You yourself have been up to skulduggery before. You know, you stitched up Shirley Sherrod pretty spectacularly. So it is -- I come back to the same question. Is it really fair, this? I don't come at it from a particular moral point of view. But just is it fair? This guy wouldn't have said this stuff if he knew he was being recorded, would he?

BREITBART: No, but this is done all the time. NBC and "Dateline" dressed up as Muslims and walked through Nascar to try to get the American people, the Tea Party extremists that Ron Schiller and NPR, you know, allude to, to try and get them to say intemperate things about Muslims. This is done on "To Catch a Predator." This has been done in the media forever.

As I said, this is because of James -- the reason people are talking about the tactics and whether or not they're correct is because an avowed conservative is using the tactics that the left of center media has used for years.

MORGAN: Forget left or right for a moment, though. Let's just discuss the tactics. Doesn't matter to me which side of the political persuasion you come from. Where is the line drawn? I mean, you are an activist, for want of a better phrase.

BREITBART: I'm not.

MORGAN: Well, you are, really, aren't you?

BREITBART: No more so than Geraldo Rivera -- than Geraldo Rivera is.

MORGAN: I would call him an activist, too.

BREITBAT: You're British. I think we're moving towards where the British are. I read the "Guardian" in the UK -- in the UK and -- and I -- because I know it's a left of center paper. And I don't have a problem with it being a left of center paper. It's avowedly left of center. And it's able to tell truths.

I think that we're ending this era of false objectivity in this country. People have opinions. NPR has a left of center opinion. And it should embrace it.

MORGAN: Where do you draw the line?

BREITBART: If James O'Keefe, who is an independent journalist, comes to me with something that doesn't sit right with me, I'm going to pass on it. I think that we have to live with our consciences. And what, you know -- the public is going to judge whether or not a tactic is over the line. But I don't think what he did is over the line. It comports with what the mainstream media has been doing for years.

“They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don’t want any other point of view. They don’t even feel guilty using tax dollars to spout their propaganda. They are basically Air America with government funding to keep them alive.”