Study: Has Editor & Publisher ‘Falsely Framed’ Peter Dreier as an Objective ACORN Critic?
by Andrew BreitbartMedia criticism of our ongoing and still unfolding ACORN story has been as bad as it has been funny and sad. The racket that is the mainstream media is coming to an end and exposed reporters and journalists, no longer feigning neutrality, have chosen to drive off the cliff, a la Thelma and Louise, in a customized ACORN convertible.
Professor and ACORN Adviser Peter Dreier
On Monday Christopher R. Martin and Peter Dreier wrote a commentary entitled “Have the Media ‘Falsely Framed’ ACORN?” for Editor & Publisher, “the authoritative journal covering all aspects of the North American newspaper industry, including business, newsroom, advertising, circulation, marketing, technology, online and syndicates.“ E&P was once the bible of the newspaper and publishing business, but in recent years has moved hard left, hiding its ideological tilt under a patina of “scholarship.”
Martin and Dreier’s piece — while not framed as such — is an ideological defense of ACORN and an attack on those who have truthfully investigated and exposed the obviously troubled community organizing group. It’s basically, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men trying to put ACORN together again. But instead of attempting to rebuild the king, Martin and Dreier are trying to rebuild the media and the left elite, who use the poor and the downtrodden as their foot soldiers in order to maintain power in government, academia, the media and Hollywood. For them, ACORN provides the perfect photo-op.
Cultural leftists have controlled these domains for so long that they are now desperately trying to put down the insurrection of millions of millions of Americans who have finally figured out how the cultural left have controlled the narrative in a center right nation and put the vast middle class into a box.
“Professors” Martin and Dreier, who in September co-authored a defense of ACORN called “Manipulating the Public Agenda: Why ACORN Was in the News, and What the News Got Wrong” (you can download the report in .pdf format here or read about it here), provide a semblance of academic respectability as they trot out Media Matters talking points against ACORN’s critics. Predictably Media Matters, the Soros-funded, John Podesta-created protector of the left wing mainstream media order, played up Martin and Dreier’s piece.
There are no coincidences in Podesta’s world. In fact, taken together with its enthusiastic collaborators in the media, such as the habitually sneering Rachel Maddow, who’s obviously never met a Republican, a conservative or a sensible idea she likes, the Axis of ACORN continually lays down a covering fire while the “community organizers” scuttle about in the darkness:
At the end of the piece Professor Dreier offers the following biography: Peter Dreier, E.P Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy Program at Occidental College.
Why did Professor Dreier choose to leave out the critical information regarding his advisory relationship to ACORN? Isn’t sitting on an advisory committee of ACORN the definition of a conflict of interest in writing a fair and balanced piece on the organization? In fact, Dreier has been shilling for ACORN at least since 2003.
Now Editor & Publisher has repeated the same critical error — as it doles out advice on the niceties of proper journalism.
Back in September, when the Martin and Dreier study came out, I offered its writers a platform to act in real time as critics/ombudsmen of our ACORN “pimp and ho” story. They declined, preferring safe left-wing venues (Maddow, E&P) to propagate ACORN’s lies and to attack the messenger — all while failing to point out Dreier’s longtime relationship with ACORN on an advisory level. It makes you wonder whether they in fact care about the truth and transparency, or simply want to perpetuate the left wing axis of journalism and academia to perpetuate their hold on their jobs, power and the artificial belief that they are morally superior and care for the downtrodden more than the working masses. Here was Martin’s reply to my invitation:
Andrew,
Thanks for calling earlier today. Peter and I are going to decline your offer for a blog post on biggovernment.com. We’d rather have people see the entire study (which, for the record, was completed before the current ACORN story emerged, so it doesn’t address it directly).
We appreciate your interest in transparency, and you are welcome to carry a link to the whole report and share it with your readers.
You can download the 61-page report at http://www.uni.edu/martin/acornstudy.pdf
Best wishes,
Chris
Patrick Frey, also known as Patterico, an online L.A. Times criticism powerhouse, pointed out the Times’ ethical lapse the last time Dreier tried to defend ACORN back in October on the pages of the L.A. Times. They have yet to apologize or correct its glaring omission. Yet, Patterico successfully forced “the paper to correct an error” in Dreier’s previous attempts to attempt to rehabilitate ACORN’s reputation using media criticism as his vessel.
Isn’t it odd how MSM errors always go against their opponents on the political right?
In his Editor & Publisher piece Dreier also chose not to disclose that he co-authored an L.A. Times article with a “community organizer” who was featured on Big Government a few weeks ago admitting that ACORN is a deeply political organization that worked “under the grapevine” to get Obama elected.
Perhaps you remember the audio taken by Gary Hewson who confronted Alvivon “Bon Bon” Hurd at a rally in front of local Fox TV in Los Angeles (not Fox News) on November 13: ”So the main thing what happened is when Obama ran we did a, we didn’t never say who we were going to run but it sort of undercover that we were going to put Obama in,” Hurd told Big Government’s Gary Hewson who was taping her at the public rally.
At the time we didn’t know who the chatty and refreshingly honest ACORN organizer was, but tips and a confirmation received Monday night show that she is a longtime left-wing community activist, and a voting precinct inspector who published an article in the L.A. Times with none other than… Peter Dreier. Shelter the Wealthy, Lock Out the Rest? Peter Dreier and Alvivon Hurd, March 26, 2001.
Dreier and Hurd are also CO-signatories on a LEFT-WING petition, “Planning for a Livable City: An Open Letter to the next Director of the Los Angeles Department of City Planning.
What a strange and small world the “vast left wing ACORN conspiracy” appears to be. I imagine ‘Bon Bon’ Hurd, Peter Dreier and Media Matter’s Eric Boehlert all huddled together in a sustainable Buckminister Fuller geodesic eco-dome as they conspire to attack Fox News and BigGovernment.com for exposing their long standing charade. But I digress.
Not only is Dreier pushing Media Matters talking points against the journalists who brought you the ACORN story, he’s also an ACORN advisor and a former writing collaborator of the woman who admitted in no uncertain terms that Hannah Giles, James O’Keefe and I are absolutely correct that ACORN lies when it claims to be a non-partisan organization. But then, we all knew that already, didn’t we?
Will E&P issue a correction for allowing Dreier to propagate another media criticism fraud after having been caught doing the exact same thing at the Los Angeles Times earlier this month?
Or is the mainstream media and the publications that cover it simply entering the end phase of their existence where they just don’t give a damn anymore?
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48 Comments
Another fine example of BM's (biased media) trying their best to distort the truth. Andrew keeps exposing these people for who they are and their agenda. And when confronted with the truth you get no reply. Really show a lack of Journalistic integrity, or just plane lack of Journalistic skills period.
Interesting fact that Obama attended that school, Um….
I think the two authors should have titled the piece
"Why we are not guilty, and if we are it does not matter anyway becasue it's someone elses fault"
These buffons think they can keep spinning this into a fairytale of their choosing, but it's going to be a morality tale by the time it is finished, and they are going to be punch line.
Great read Andy…….Thank you for your work!
When you have the words on the paper, much of the same paper, one must wonder why so much denial still exists. I guess the Kool Aid keeps you oblivious to what is really actually going on!
It's always grins Andrew.
Reinforcements are coming bro. Forget about Fox, we are going to forge a Common Sense media juggernaut for those with I.Q.'s north of 100.
Keep safe my friend.
meet the new slave owners of Amerika…..these leftist elitists.
Yes, they could be the poster boys for "Meet the new US Slave owners"…..they rally to provide entitlements by forcing millions to become dependant on them… in exchange for their future votes, to yield ever increasing power.
Wow…..with guys like this, the Confederates might have won the Civil war….you think?? No…Abe Lincoln wouldn't have put up with there crap….might actually shoot them for treason?????
Keep it up, Andrew! I think you've already single-handedly given Republicans a 10 point boost in the 2010 election, all by just pointing out the truth.
As usual when the left gets called out, there webpostings disapper:
"You can download the 61-page report at http://www.uni.edu/martin/acornstudy.pdf" link is GONE
ACORN & Editor & Publisher & Peter Dreier & Alvivion Hurd & Obama are all victims of Breitbart's ACORN Stalker Syndrome (ASS).
They need American empathy and shelter from the bullying of heartless Rethuglicans!
Or, something.
http://www.uni.edu/martinc/acornstudy.pdf... just a linking error..
An undisclosed conflict of interest. Somehow I am not surprised.
You know, my younger brother and I used to joke about conspiracies. I posited that there doesn't *need* to be a conspiracy for there to be the *appearance* of a conspiracy. Basically, there was no need for a bunch of people gathered in back rooms, smoking black cigars, and twirling mustaches, to have the results we have. People moving in ideological lock-step can work toward producing results that appear to be conspiratorial due to the common teleological orientations. Heck, even ideological opposites can have the same results in mind (globalization – the left wants it for reasons well understood by most here, and many on the right want it for believing, rightly or wrongly, that it will increase economic well-being for all).
Now, it appears that, for at least the last 10-15 years, there actually HAVE been the classical conspiracies! I mean, seriously, I NEVER would have guessed that there was this amount of collusion since the Soviet spies in the US back in the 30's through the 60's.
I am shocked. SHOCKED I say! Still and all, that doesn't mean that there are conspiracies everywhere, or even remotely close to anywhere many claim. I must admit, however, that I have been wrong on at least a few occasions – this being one of them.
"Climategate" (or, "Climaquiddick," as one commentator has dubbed the debacle) is just another example. I would caution, though, that neither of these "classical conspiracies" are widespread. They rely on small groups that steer, as it were, the larger, broader, ideologically-tied group.
I think it is also important to point out that when I talk about "classical conspiracies," I am acknowledging that the small groups doing the "steering" are doing so knowingly and, at times, with full knowledge of the falsity of their positions. This sort of reminds me of the police officer talking to Syme in "The Man Who Was Thursday." There is always that far larger outer ring of anarchists (to use the example from the book) that are ideological soldiers but aren't actually in on the plotting.
the sinner,
Patrick
Andrew, I agree completely, except for the bit about Bucky Fuller. He did not belong in an article about the Acorn-E&P axis: he had real accomplishments.
How does falsely framing Acorn differ from truthfully framing them?
Great work again, Andrew. They really don't like what you're doing … exposing the truth under the layers of dishonest reporting. Stay safe.
Why Mr. Breitbart, I do believe you're giving us hope and change.
What slime! Drier writing articles as if he's had NO skin in the game, and he worked with BonBon to boot! I hate the media. I knew it was going to be bad when BO was elected with Pelosi an Reid navigating and the media driving. I really had no idea it was this bad. This is disgusting.
Drier and the rest of his academic ilk are afraid that if ACORN and all the other sham organizations will dry up, that they will have to go out and get real jobs. What a ouple of jokesters……..
who is this rachel madcow, makes me sick to watch this lame duck.
I knew when I first saw "puppy training pads" at Wal-Mart that things were getting bad for newspapers as a shortage was indicated. That they remained and are apparently still selling indicates people would rather pay that price than get a newspaper.
This is just further confirmation. It is no longer worth buying a newspaper for a dog to piss on.
How much longer until Wal-Mart starts selling papier mache kits for the kiddies, with sheets of "authentic newspaper-type paper"?
E&P are probably too stupid to realize how stupid Andrew made them look. Does the MSM realize the jig is up? That the Internet has ripped the cloak of faux legitimacy from these fools?
I canceled the LA Times last year during the election. I couldn't stomach the slant anymore. It permeates every page. Even the sports section was not immune. They finally stopped calling me to subscribe when I told them that "It's the CONTENT stupid!"
"The patina of scholorship"…
Well played, well played indeed and I thought the likes of a William F. Buckley were never again to be seen, but you're getting up there Andrew.
[...] journalists” because we don’t follow the ridiculous guidelines they set up and then fail to adhere to themselves, it brings me great pleasure to back-up today’s post about “Bon Bon” Hurd with a [...]
Andrew,
Thank you again for exposing the fraud of lame street media and academia. Keep up the great work!
The level of corruption continues to unfold. It is now to the point that when a story like this comes out I’m not even shocked. I’ve come to expect it. The only thing I wonder is just how high does it go. Who is Obama’s puppetmaster? Is it acorn & seiu? Andy Stern? Rahm? Oprah? Who is the real player we haven’t found or is he/she standing in plain site laughing @ us as we unwind their ball of string. Obama is just a figurehead used to spearhead this movement. You can see the pressure of trying to socialize America on his face, his weight loss & his desire to be loved worldwide. The mistake made is his insecurity, hence the desire to be loved as well as too much exposure with the wrong people. Those 2 mistakes may cost the socialists 75 yrs. worth of planning. We just have to unravel it before 2012.
This didn't paste too well, but BG's article is nested in quite nicely betwixt the blatantly biased articles by Drier – Google News search on Acorn.
Did the media cover ACORN fairly?
Plain Dealer – 2 hours ago
By Plain Dealer staff Editor & Publisher conducted a study of how the media covered the ACORN controversy. It analyzed all stories about ACORN from 2007 and …
Study: Has Editor & Publisher 'Falsely Framed' Peter Dreier as an Objective … Big Government (blog)
Have the Media 'Falsely Framed' ACORN? Editor & Publisher
"Have the Media 'Falsely Framed' ACORN?" Media Matters for America
all 5 news articles »Email this story
My God, these loons spin out their propaganda such impunity, acting as a metastisizing cancer cosuming our democracy. The staggering scope and scale of acorn is now being revealed by ethichal journalists, showing a corrupting bunch of tar babys interconnectected and stuck together leading straight to the president of the United States. This whole thing just gets uglier and uglier.
"There are no coincidences in Podesta’s world." "But then, we all knew that already, didn’t we?"
It's time the whole world knows it too! Catfish enchiladas anyone?
Andrew Breitbart, you are a brilliant individual.
I ain't exactly the dumbest sumbitch ever to walk the earth, but damn! You are up there!
I know that I've posted this before, but Andrew, you need to put all of this in a book; it would sell like hotcakes!
THE MSM is DEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They just don't know it yet.
If they won't report so what, there are plenty of real journalist out there on the internet getting the stories and truth out there more and more.
So with every news story they refuse to report, let the MSM die their slow and miserable death
Who needs television when we have real-life drama like this unfolding every day.
Excellent piece, Andrew. Keep it the great work. We're with you all the way.
Hey everybody the LA times pulled their story (lol).
I found the article though if anybody wants to read it. Suggest copying it
http://departments.oxy.edu/uepi/publications/shel...
"Shelter the Wealthy, Lock Out the Rest?"
LA times article got pulled. Found a copy:
http://departments.oxy.edu/uepi/publications/shel... (sry if its a double post, I don't see the first one)
"Shelter the Wealthy, Lock Out the Rest?" article got pulled. Copy:
http://departments.oxy.edu/uepi/publications/shel...
(I should have posted at the end like everybody else, sorry for double posts guys! Guess admin isn't liking me x.x)
"Cultural leftists have controlled these domains for so long that they are now desperately trying to put down the insurrection of millions of millions of Americans who have finally figured out how the cultural left have controlled the narrative in a center right nation and put the vast middle class into a box."
The "cultural left" controlled the "narrative"? Tell us how that worked from 2000-2008. I don't perceive a whole lot of cultural-left-controlled narrative having gone on there. More like war-desiring evidence-ignoring nutjobs who said anything to further their own ends, and had it lapped up by a media that insisted it couldn't control the "narrative".
The rhetoric from people like yourself is a sort of mirror of the myriad Marxist organisations there used to be, which hated each other with as much energy as they hated capitalism. But you go about it in a different way. If the past differs from what you want it to be, you insist it's a fraud. You're absolutely zero distance away from the wingnuts who think 9/11 was a conspiracy; all that differs is the topic you've chosen to immerse yourself in.
Obama won. He's the president. Now get on with the rest of your life.
Wow, such ignorance. I don't know – how 'bout the article the NY Times ran the Sunday before the 2006 mid-term elections regarding WMD's and Iraq. I remember there was a big to-do because all the assessments about Iran having nuclear capabilities (or where it was in the process of acquiring them) turned out to be wrong. Who did the NY Times blame? Bush, of course! Why? Because he had the Iraqi doc-ex online. And there were so many documents outlining the broad WMD programs, including nuclear weapons technologies, in those documents that, the NYT hypothesized, if Iran *did* have any nuclear weapons capabilities, it was because Bush gave it to them through his stupidly posting all of those captured documents online!
Of course, when it was finally pointed out to the NYT editorial board that they had basically admitted Iraq did, in fact, have WMD programs of advanced levels, the NYT posted the weakest retraction ever. It amounted to, basically, "you know when we said that Iraq had really advanced WMD programs? Yeah, we didn't mean that it had really advanced WMD programs." That's it. No explanation as to what they actually meant, or why it was such a block-buster that the NYT felt the necessity to try to blame the failure of the previous Iranian nuclear capabilities estimates on Bush.
And that's only one of hundreds, if not thousands, of instances. The cultural left has dominated the pop culture, "everybody knows" realm of "knowledge" for decades and decades. How else can one explain the myth, believed by most people, that the Nazis were right wing? Ever read any of their early pamphlets? They're all about Marxism! Just on a national scale. As Jonah Goldberg points out in "Liberal Fascism," the fact that the fascists wouldn't bow down to Moscow led to a directive, issued from Moscow, to call fascists "right wing." The meme was faithfully passed on by "intellectuals" and "academics" around the world.
There are so many stories of "everybody knows" "truth" turning out to be completely false it's hard to know where to start. Like "Inherit the Wind." Complete fabrication for the purposes of cutting into religious people. If you look at what actually happened at the trial, it was a set-up, involving all parties, from the beginning. But, leftist culture didn't like that story, so they gave us "Inherit the Wind."
Alger Hiss? The Rosenbergs? Yeah, actual communist spies, not just sympathizers (see the Venona Cables). The fact is, there doesn't need to be a massive conspiracy or an oppressive agency. Ideological lock-step is enough to get to where we are – a conspiracy-like end result.
And, by they by, what does Obama winning the election have to do with anything? How does that support your positions stated prior to your last sentences? It is a non-starter. His having won, and being the president, has NOTHING, whatsoever, to do with the fact that cultural leftists are, and have been, in control of the vast majority of information outlets in this, and most other, country for a very, very long time.
the sinner,
Patrick
http://employees.oxy.edu/dreier/courses.htm He has no vested interest in community organizing! From patterico people.
Some one call Fox and start the Fox Conservative Channel! Move Beck, Hannity, Andrew, Sarah Palin (with her own Oprah styled show), Ann Coulter, Rush (hey, he even lost weight for this opportunity), Savage, Levine (can they deepen his voice, oh never mind). Then By God we can really enjoy our News and Fox TV. Sort of the Conservative version of MSNBC, nothing but opinion based on the facts. Only MSNBC ignores the facts and just gives the opinion.
The Hierarchy is in disarray, damage control is in full swing, all stops are being pulled!!!!! Secret meeting places are packed beyond capacity, someone call the Fire Marshal!!!!!!!!!! On second thought, just lock the doors of their "Club Houses", they've rounded themselves up!!!! IMPRISON THE IMPRISONERS, ONLY THEN WILL YOU FIND FREEDOM!!!!!!! The EARTH will be your home again, where you can once again be fruitful, without feeling guilty!!!!!!!!
Without acknowledging a mistake, E&P has inserted the following defensive wording into Peter Dreier's bio: "Dreier has advised ACORN on policy matters but says he has never been paid by the group or any of its affiliates."
At no point did I assert Professor Dreier has a pecuniary interest in ACORN. My issue, as to make it more glaringly obvious than it already is, is that Professor Dreier has a political interest in ACORN and has used media criticism as a vessel to make a political attack without pointing out that Dreier and ACORN have simpatico politico goals.
In attacking Big Government's coverage as politically motivated he seeks to neutralize its impact and throw the MSM off the scent of ACORN's crimes. The MSM didn't actually need it. They've chosen, too, for ideological reasons to ignore the ACORN story. When Clark Hoyt at the NY TIMES admitted the paper was, again, late to the story, it did not result in the NY Times beginning to report on the story.
I stand by my large point. The mainstream media cannot handle that upstarts are taking on their Achille's Heel — media bias — and winning. As long as they deny it and continue to dole it out, we will be there to make them look stupid. The warning has been issued now for the umpteenth time.
"Dreier has advised ACORN on policy matters but says he has never been paid by the group or any of its affiliates."
They forgot to add "not that can be traced."
I will never let myself be a victim of Acorn again, these rat bastards never knew what love of country meant!
[...] That’s also the theme, regarding a very different topic from global “warming”, that Andrew Breitbart discusses as well, over at Big Government. [...]
Peter Dreier, E.P Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy Program at Occidental College.
Didn't Obama go to Occidental College? And if Dreier is a "distinguished professor" there, might it be possible that Obama took a Dreier course there?
[...] “Pimp and Pro” ACORN story strategist Andrew Breitbart responded in a BigGovernment.com article dated the same day and titled “Study: Has Editor & Publisher ‘Falsely Framed’ Peter Dreier as an Objective ACORN Critic?” (http://biggovernment.com/2009/11/25/study-has-editor-publisher-falsely-framed-peter-dreier-as-an-obj…. [...]
[...] Andrew Breitbart articulated on BigGovernment November 25th, regarding a “study” Dreier produced critical of media coverage of ACORN: At the [...]
[...] Andrew Breitbart articulated on BigGovernment November 25th, regarding a “study” Dreier produced critical of media coverage of ACORN: At the [...]