FrankRep
09-17-2009, 07:21 PM
ACORN: Another Reason Americans Distrust The Media (http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5377-acorn-story-another-reason-americans-distrust-the-media)
R. Cort Kirkwood | John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/)
17 September 2009
If you want to know what’s wrong with the mainstream and leftist American media, consider two examples that the media provided in covering, or not covering, the growing scandal over ACORN (http://www.acorn.com/), the community group now famous for the prostitution videos posted at BigGovernment.com (http://www.biggovernment.com/).
The story is covered in full at The New American (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/1895-acorn-funding-in-peril). But to reprise it briefly, two young conservatives, James O’Keefe and Hanna Giles, traveled to ACORN offices across the country posing as a pimp and his prostitute. In Balitmore, Md., Brooklyn, N.Y., and Washington, D.C., they filmed ACORN employees helping them set up brothels by offering tax and loan advice. The videos are quite the hit on YouTube, and a fourth installment posted earlier this week features an ACORN staff member saying she killed her husband. That employee later said (http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=12439&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=22583&tx_ttnews=12387&cHash=f1e6ffcdd4) she was wise to the sting and hammed it up for the cameras.
Maybe so. But ACORN’s political support has cut and run. The Census Bureau has ended its relationship (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/11/census-bureau-severs-ties-acorn/) with ACORN, which was supposed to help with the 2010 census. The U.S. Senate cut off funding (http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bal-md.acorn15sep15,0,2143555,print.story) from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. The House Minority Leader, John Boehner, R-Ohio, has introduced legislation (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Boehner-The-Defund-ACORN-Act-will-be-introduced-today-59340527.html) to stop funding the group. And it’s biggest supporter, President Obama, said the conduct (http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/white-house-calls-acorn-employees-behavior-unacceptable.html) was “completely unacceptable.” This is from the man who gave ACORN $832,000 during the 2008 election campaign to help “get out the vote.”
In any event, the mainstream media hasn’t been interested, and those who have done stories have delivered themselves of the usual bias: ACORN isn’t the problem; the conservatives who expose it are. Two examples are typical.
You needn’t even go past the New York Times’ headline to know what’s coming: Conservatives Draw Blood From Acorn, Favorite Foe (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/us/politics/16acorn.html?_r=4&emc=eta1). Although the Web version is missing the last two words and did not hammer the two conservatives who produced the film, it did tar conservatives in general: “It was, in effect, the latest scalp claimed by those on the right who have made no secret of their hope to weaken the Obama administration by attacking allies and appointees they view as leftist. … Conservatives believe that they have hit upon a winning formula for such attacks: mobilizing people to dig up dirt, trumpeting it on talk radio and television, prompting Congress to weigh in and demanding action from the Obama administration.”
In a sense, this is true, but note the Times’ locution: Conservatives, “hope to weaken the Obama administration by attacking allies and appointees they view as leftist.” One might ask whether the Times was ever interested in the leftist, or that very newspaper’s, “hope to weaken” the Bush, Reagan and Nixon administrations “by attacking allies and appointees they view as rightist.” That said, the sentence implicitly suggests Obama’s allies and appointees aren’t really leftist. Tell that to communist Van Jones, racist Jeremiah Wright (http://tiny.cc/2IAKH), and terrorist Bill Ayers.
The second example smacks more of leftist hypocrisy than anything else. NBC’s Norah O’Donnell (http://tiny.cc/eveWG) told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on his “Morning Joe” program that the videos “might be viewed as entrapment.” That’s rich coming from NBC, as columnist Michelle Malkin observed (http://michellemalkin.com/2009/09/15/nbc-the-network-that-rigged-crash-tests-staged-racism-stings-faked-flood-coverage-criticizes-acorn-entrapment/). Malkin noted the abject apology NBC’s Dateline was forced to broadcast when the program was caught rigging cars from General Motors to explode for an “expose.” Even more to the point is NBC Dateline’s "To Catch A Predator,” series, which aired for four years. In that one, reporter Chris Hansen, working with "Perverted Justice (http://www.perverted-justice.com/index.php)” and police officers posing as underage girls cruising the Internet, invited men for assignations with the underage girls. Police arrested the men when they showed up for the illegal liaison. The network also tried, hilariously enough, to stage a Borat (http://www.google.com/search?q=borat&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGLR_en)-like “Islamophobia” sting at a NASCAR race.
These may seem small examples of media bias, and to some degree they are. But they are typical, as was the comment from Politico’s Mike Allen, who said (http://newsbusters.org/node/32834/print) the mainstream media missed the story because they had to cover “real news.”
Point is, the media’s handling of the story demonstrates why so many Americans don’t trust them. It isn’t just their obvious political and tub-drumming for Obama (http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=63C6F505-3048-5C12-0030F1E8CB81ACD8). It’s because they lie (http://www.reason.com/news/printer/118516.html) and hide truths about the left and leftist ideology. The media could have exposed ACORN years ago, and should have done a much better job uncovering its nationwide voter registration fraud (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/1857-acorn-vote-fraud-and-prostitution) last year. The media missed the latest ACORN scandal story not because they were worried about “entrapment” or any ethical consideration or even because they are pursuing “real news.” Rather, ACORN is a leftist ally of the media. Yet it is "viewed as leftist" only by conservatives, not by the media, who see no other position as legitimate except their own.
That, then, is what’s wrong with the mainstream media: They cannot be trusted. Not exactly a newsflash.
[B]SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5377-acorn-story-another-reason-americans-distrust-the-media
R. Cort Kirkwood | John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/)
17 September 2009
If you want to know what’s wrong with the mainstream and leftist American media, consider two examples that the media provided in covering, or not covering, the growing scandal over ACORN (http://www.acorn.com/), the community group now famous for the prostitution videos posted at BigGovernment.com (http://www.biggovernment.com/).
The story is covered in full at The New American (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/1895-acorn-funding-in-peril). But to reprise it briefly, two young conservatives, James O’Keefe and Hanna Giles, traveled to ACORN offices across the country posing as a pimp and his prostitute. In Balitmore, Md., Brooklyn, N.Y., and Washington, D.C., they filmed ACORN employees helping them set up brothels by offering tax and loan advice. The videos are quite the hit on YouTube, and a fourth installment posted earlier this week features an ACORN staff member saying she killed her husband. That employee later said (http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=12439&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=22583&tx_ttnews=12387&cHash=f1e6ffcdd4) she was wise to the sting and hammed it up for the cameras.
Maybe so. But ACORN’s political support has cut and run. The Census Bureau has ended its relationship (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/11/census-bureau-severs-ties-acorn/) with ACORN, which was supposed to help with the 2010 census. The U.S. Senate cut off funding (http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bal-md.acorn15sep15,0,2143555,print.story) from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. The House Minority Leader, John Boehner, R-Ohio, has introduced legislation (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Boehner-The-Defund-ACORN-Act-will-be-introduced-today-59340527.html) to stop funding the group. And it’s biggest supporter, President Obama, said the conduct (http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/white-house-calls-acorn-employees-behavior-unacceptable.html) was “completely unacceptable.” This is from the man who gave ACORN $832,000 during the 2008 election campaign to help “get out the vote.”
In any event, the mainstream media hasn’t been interested, and those who have done stories have delivered themselves of the usual bias: ACORN isn’t the problem; the conservatives who expose it are. Two examples are typical.
You needn’t even go past the New York Times’ headline to know what’s coming: Conservatives Draw Blood From Acorn, Favorite Foe (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/us/politics/16acorn.html?_r=4&emc=eta1). Although the Web version is missing the last two words and did not hammer the two conservatives who produced the film, it did tar conservatives in general: “It was, in effect, the latest scalp claimed by those on the right who have made no secret of their hope to weaken the Obama administration by attacking allies and appointees they view as leftist. … Conservatives believe that they have hit upon a winning formula for such attacks: mobilizing people to dig up dirt, trumpeting it on talk radio and television, prompting Congress to weigh in and demanding action from the Obama administration.”
In a sense, this is true, but note the Times’ locution: Conservatives, “hope to weaken the Obama administration by attacking allies and appointees they view as leftist.” One might ask whether the Times was ever interested in the leftist, or that very newspaper’s, “hope to weaken” the Bush, Reagan and Nixon administrations “by attacking allies and appointees they view as rightist.” That said, the sentence implicitly suggests Obama’s allies and appointees aren’t really leftist. Tell that to communist Van Jones, racist Jeremiah Wright (http://tiny.cc/2IAKH), and terrorist Bill Ayers.
The second example smacks more of leftist hypocrisy than anything else. NBC’s Norah O’Donnell (http://tiny.cc/eveWG) told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on his “Morning Joe” program that the videos “might be viewed as entrapment.” That’s rich coming from NBC, as columnist Michelle Malkin observed (http://michellemalkin.com/2009/09/15/nbc-the-network-that-rigged-crash-tests-staged-racism-stings-faked-flood-coverage-criticizes-acorn-entrapment/). Malkin noted the abject apology NBC’s Dateline was forced to broadcast when the program was caught rigging cars from General Motors to explode for an “expose.” Even more to the point is NBC Dateline’s "To Catch A Predator,” series, which aired for four years. In that one, reporter Chris Hansen, working with "Perverted Justice (http://www.perverted-justice.com/index.php)” and police officers posing as underage girls cruising the Internet, invited men for assignations with the underage girls. Police arrested the men when they showed up for the illegal liaison. The network also tried, hilariously enough, to stage a Borat (http://www.google.com/search?q=borat&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGLR_en)-like “Islamophobia” sting at a NASCAR race.
These may seem small examples of media bias, and to some degree they are. But they are typical, as was the comment from Politico’s Mike Allen, who said (http://newsbusters.org/node/32834/print) the mainstream media missed the story because they had to cover “real news.”
Point is, the media’s handling of the story demonstrates why so many Americans don’t trust them. It isn’t just their obvious political and tub-drumming for Obama (http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=63C6F505-3048-5C12-0030F1E8CB81ACD8). It’s because they lie (http://www.reason.com/news/printer/118516.html) and hide truths about the left and leftist ideology. The media could have exposed ACORN years ago, and should have done a much better job uncovering its nationwide voter registration fraud (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/1857-acorn-vote-fraud-and-prostitution) last year. The media missed the latest ACORN scandal story not because they were worried about “entrapment” or any ethical consideration or even because they are pursuing “real news.” Rather, ACORN is a leftist ally of the media. Yet it is "viewed as leftist" only by conservatives, not by the media, who see no other position as legitimate except their own.
That, then, is what’s wrong with the mainstream media: They cannot be trusted. Not exactly a newsflash.
[B]SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5377-acorn-story-another-reason-americans-distrust-the-media