A week ago liberals were in a tizzy over the arrest of undercover filmmaker James O’Keefe and three others who were apprehended by U.S. marshals in Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-LA) office in New Orleans. Early reports, first by the New Orleans Times-Picayune and later by mainstream outlets across the country, asserted that O’Keefe and company were bugging or wiretapping the office phones.

As it turns out, the affidavit said nothing about wiretapping. The exact language was “willfully and maliciously interfering with a telephone system.” Yet that didn’t stop The Washington Post from splashing an article on its front page with this scintillating headline: “ACORN foe charged in alleged plot to wiretap Landrieu.” Headline writers are known for eye-catching prose, but this was amateur hour at a once-great newspaper.

Many “objective” journalists presumed O’Keefe was guilty before he even had a chance to speak. Worse, the crime he was being accused of committing wasn’t even mentioned in the affidavit from FBI Special Agent Steven Rayes and U.S. Magistrate Judge Daniel E. Knowles III.

How could journalists get something so wrong? The problem appears to stem from a lack of original reporting and an overreliance on one factually inaccurate article in the Times-Picayune. Not all news organizations were at fault, but most were. In covering its own botched reporting, TPM Muckraker admitted as much: “While initial media reports (including on TPM) described the episode at Sen. Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans office as an attempted bugging, that term does not appear in the affidavit…. [T]he accurate way to describe what allegedly happened would be attempted phone tampering.” Oops!

As the facts finally started to emerge, it was hard to tell who had committed the worse offense: O’Keefe, for pulling a stupid stunt in the name of investigative journalism, or the press that obsessively covered a story so full of errors that many had to issue wide-ranging retractions. (O’Keefe’s role in the ACORN sting also resulted in a lengthy Washington Post correction.)

I don’t condone what O’Keefe did. I’m on the record questioning the ethics of his actions. But there’s a sharp distinction between engaging in media criticism of one’s journalism tactics and outright slandering that person.

That’s exactly what the media did to O’Keefe. He calls it “journalism malpractice.” Liberal windbag David Shuster of MSNBC led the charge with this tweet: “a) you are not a journalist b) the truth is you intended to tap her phones c) it’s a felony d) you will go to prison.” Shuster went so far out of bounds that even liberal MSNBC reprimanded him. He should’ve been fired instead.

When I wrote about O’Keefe last week, I didn’t do so to disparage him. I wanted to emphasize the important role that ethics play in journalism. “Avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information except when traditional open methods will not yield information vital to the public,” states the Society of Professional Journalists. My point, and one that O’Keefe seems to agree with in retrospect, is that he could’ve used different tactics to tell the story about Landrieu.

“I’m going to be more thoughtful how I approach these things,” a remorseful O’Keefe told Sean Hannity two nights ago on Fox News. (Watch the clip on YouTube.)

O’Keefe’s credibility took a hit last week and it’ll be a long road to recovery. He and I might not agree on this style of investigative journalism, but I credit him for recognizing its limits and vowing to adjust his tactics to expose the truth. Now, if mainstream journalists would make a similar admission about their own errors, journalism wouldn’t be in such a dire state today.