A mic-wielding James O'Keefe apparently tried to ambush interview Columbia journalism dean Sree Sreenivasan, who promptly seemed to turn the tables on the conservative prankster, asking him questions about his choice of costumes for his stunts. As Gawker's John Cook explained, O'Keefe was trying confront Sreenivasan to get ammunition for his "To Catch a Journalist" crusade (which has "targeted," among others, HuffPost's Sam Stein and NYU professor Jay Rosen). But when he got talking to Sreenivasan, the dean just turned on his cellphone camera and started asking questions right back (in the video below). Wrote Sree Sreenivasan on his Twitter account:

If you don't recognize this guy, his best known appearance is as a pimp.... 11ish am today, James O'Keefe, the guy whose undercover videos did damage to ACORN and NPR, showed up at my office hours at Columbia Journalism School, camera rolling. He wanted to ask about his recent entanglements with my colleague Dale Maharidge (Google it) and to make other allegations. So halfway through, I started videotaping him on my iPhone. After he was done with me, I should have kept rolling, because they get to the exit and find they can't open it. He says, "Have they locked us in?" Turns out they were pulling the door instead of pushing it.

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Erik Hayden