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We wondered, back when the Tea Party Express was running ads on Fox, why they bothered, since they'd soon be getting all the free advertising they could ask for.

And sure enough, Griff Jenkins has been filing reports from the multiple cross-country stops for the tour since its outset, provided for all the various Fox anchors (Sean Hannity, Greta Van Susteren, Neal Cavuto, Bill O'Reilly, the Fox and Friends crew) to feature in their regular broadcasts.

Quelle surprise: they haven't had to run any ads on Fox since they started touring.

Most of the time, Jenkins -- who's clearly cheerleading this effort and not trying in the least to act like an actual reporter -- at least has bothered to mostly feature interviews with attending teabaggers, so as to at least create the appearance of some semblage of journalism in these reports.

But last night, on Sean Hannity's show, Jenkins just dropped the pretense, and gathered the teabaggers in New York behind him as props and launched into a rant about how these events were all about average Americans taking back America from an out-of-control federal government. He wasn't reporting; he was essentially being a paid propagandist for the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, which is the sponsor of this event.

And the funny thing is, as we reported earlier, the Our Country Deserves Better PAC has ALWAYS been about opposing whatever policies President Obama pursues. That is, this is a specifically anti-Obama campaign, and the rhetoric about "out of control government" is a fig leaf:

The "Our Country Deserves Better" PAC, in fact, was founded in August 2008 -- before the election -- specifically to oppose Barack Obama and his policies. (They called it "drawing contrasts between Senator Barack Obama and John McCain".) In October 2008, for instance, Williams was out on the stump campaigning against Obama as a "socialist" on a previous bus tour called the "Stop Obama Express". They've also runs ads comparing Obama to Hitler.

Jenkins claimed this was "black and white," but the crowd shots are almost completely of white faces. Moreover, I'll wager that every single one of them is a disappointed Republican -- if not a McCain voter, then a Ron Paul voter.

In fact, a better name for the whole enterprise would be The Sore Loser Express. Because that's who's coming out for these things -- people who think they can get a do-over on the election.

Including the fine folks at Fox, evidently.

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We already knew that Griff Jenkins' attempt to ambush ACORN officials earlier this week on behalf of Glenn Beck didn't exactly produce any scintillating video moments -- except when Adam Green pinned his ears to the wall for pretending to be a legitimate journalist. (As though any legitimate journalist would bring a prop intended to humiliate his interview subjects.)

So Jenkins went on Beck's show last night and presented what little decent video he had. As you can see, no one was interested in helping his little stunt along, and most of the people who actually talked to him did little to advance the narrative he wanted to create.

Verdict: Fail. Epic Fail.

Adam Green from Open Left spotted one of those Fox News ambush crew outside an ACORN gathering yesterday and decided to have a little fun with them on behalf of Amanda Terkel.

It was Griff Jenkins, there on behalf of Glenn Beck (who barely used Jenkins' stunt on his show, since it was not exactly a success), complete with a small red carpet he rolled out for ACORN officials. Mind you, it was Jesse Watters, not Jenkins, who perpetrated that outrageous stalking of Terkel, but then, the whole ambush-crew approach is such a journalistic travesty it doesn't matter.

Besides, we've seen Jenkins besiege a hapless history prof with bogus misrepresentations of his work, so it's not like he's an innocent in this. And who can forget Griff getting smacked down by Barney Frank?

Indeed, this whole ambush-journalism thing doesn't seem to be working out too well for Griff. He certainly wasn't prepared to deal with Green. Karmic payback and all that.

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The Ambush Virus is spreading at Fox News. Earlier this week, producer Griff Jenkins ambushed history professor Alan Brinkley over the wording of a few lines in one of his textbooks:

Jenkins claimed that the network invited Brinkley onto the program, but Fox News has been known to lie about inviting its perceived enemies on air. ThinkProgress contacted Brinkley and it turns out Fox extended an invitation to him only after stalking and ambushing him:

A Fox News crew was waiting for me when I left my home yesterday, followed me for two blocks with questions and accusations, and then left. Later that day, I was asked to come onto the show, which I declined to do. I did e-mail the person who invited me with responses to the two mistaken charges they made when I was being followed by the camera crew.

After being stalked and ambushed, Brinkley did release a statement to Fox refuting Jenkins’ claims — and forcing Jenkins to halfheartedly admit he had been wrong about one of his charges.

The key part of Brinkley's statement reads:

One is that I claimed that only one person was tried and convicted in the war on terror. That’s not correct. I said that of the large group of Muslims rounded up immediately after 9/11, only one of them was tried and convicted. Other defendants were, of course, tried and convicted at later dates.

The problem, as The Bwog noted, is that Jenkins was waving about numbers from this year, while Brinkley's book was published in 2006 -- when, in fact, the statement that Jenkins finds so offensive was in fact accurate.

So the basis of Jenkins' charge against Brinkley was essentially bogus; if he had a beef with anyone, it might have been with the editors at the book's publishing house, who evidently have not been diligent enough in updating details of the book for its subsequent printings. Moreover, it's clear that Jenkins is misreading Brinkley, who carefully specified that he was talking about the people arrested immediately after 9/11, while Jenkins' figures refer to all the terrorism suspects rounded up since the terror attacks.

Now, having been shown for the screwup that he is, you'd think Jenkins would go into hiding and take his vicious little videotape with him. But there he was again this morning on Fox and Friends, proudly running the tape again, and declaiming:

Now guys, shortly after this encounter, the good provost did issue a statement. However, it was responding to something I didn't accuse him of. And he pointed out in one of his books, somewhere else in another chapter, he did mention 3,000 Americans were dead. Fact is, that there's bias in these books, and he misleads the reader.

The worst part of all this, as we noted when Bill O'Reilly sends out his minions on similar attack missions, is that this is a gross abrogation of basic ethical standards for journalists -- who typically resort to such stalking and ambushes for actual criminal actors or public-office miscreants -- not people whose words the journalist finds offensive.

Fox is using its ambush crews not to attack people they genuinely believe have broken the law or harmed the public's welfare, but merely people with whom they disagree.

That's a very, very dangerous development.

The Rude Pundit has some appropriately rude thoughts in response to Jenkins.