Allahpundit wrote up the background for this amusing story of Big Media fabrication here:

Patterico’s been needling LA Times columnist James Rainey for weeks over a column he wrote in late September defending ACORN, in which he uncritically accepted the assurances of a certain local employee that there’s no funny business going on in the L.A. office . . .

That certain local employee turned out to be the star of the latest ACORN video, from Los Angeles — and the ACORN employee whom Rainey had so naively quoted turned out to be willing to do “research” for Giles and O’Keefe to help them keep their underage prostitution ring off the books. This revelation prompted Allahpundit to say:

Can’t wait for Rainey’s next column.

Well, that column is here, and it’s full of the kind of butt-covering whitewashing and whining you would expect. I give a fuller synopsis of Rainey’s deceitful tactics at my blog. But what I want to bring to your attention is the following passage — in which, as best as I can tell, Rainey simply made something up out of whole cloth:

So what sort of creature does this make O’Keefe? I don’t disagree with his observation in a previous interview with The Times that he follows the mold of filmmaker Michael Moore, using confrontation to get at his version of the truth.

In an e-mail, O’Keefe told me today that Rainey’s statement is a “complete fabrication” that “borders on defamation as Moore uses apparent fancy cutting and pasting to make subjects look bad.” O’Keefe says Rainey’s statement “warrants a correction.”

Indeed, a search of the L.A. Times’s archives reveals exactly one piece that uses the terms “Michael Moore” and “O’Keefe.” That would be Rainey’s column from today.

I have written Rainey for a citation to his source. But somehow, I’m guessing that the “source” will turn out to be his hindquarters.

Just the latest example of the quality job we have come to expect from Big Media.

UPDATE: Rainey is apparently now claiming that O’Keefe made the comment to a reporter who didn’t publish it. Odd indeed. Details in an update to this post.