The mainstream media were complicit in their coverage of the ACORN scandal. Their behavior was and continues to be an insult to democracy and journalistic responsibility as the Fourth Estate has ignored facts, engaged in one-sided sourcing, and avoided basic and inherently important journalistic questioning.
First, there was avoidance. Some media outlets simply ignored the story. On Sept. 15, five days after the Maryland tape was released, ABC’s Charlie Gibson said, “I don’t even know about it… so you’ve got me at a loss” and said that the story might be “just one you leave to the cables.” But, Gibson was not alone in his lack of knowledge. The New York Times did not cover the story for nearly a week. On Sept. 26, Clark Hoyt, The Times’ Public Editor, acknowledged the paper’s tardiness, but insinuated that the story was lacking in facts:
But for days, as more videos were posted and government authorities rushed to distance themselves from Acorn, The Times stood still. Some stories, lacking facts, never catch fire…But others do, and a newspaper like The Times needs to be alert to them or wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself.
Tags: ABC, ACORN, ACORN Los Angeles, ACORN Miami, ACORN New York Posted Oct 21st 2009 at 10:03 am in ACORN, Media Criticism |
18734182 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/bhallowell/2009/10/21/the-medias-complicity-analysis-of-acorn-coverage/The+Media%27s+Complicity%3A+Analysis+of+ACORN+Coverage2009-10-21+17%3A03%3A23Billy+Hallowell
Alinsky Rule #1: “Power isn’t only what you have, it’s what the enemy thinks you have.”
Now that ACORN lied to you, Media Matters, what are you going to do?
**UPDATE 2:24 PM EST** We muted the audio of the ACORN employees on the video released today due to ACORN’s legal attack upon us. We call upon ACORN to state publicly now that it has no objection to the public release of any its employees oral statements to us. If they are interested in the truth, why wouldn’t they do so?
Tags: ACORN, ACORN Philly, acorn prostitute, acorn prostitute video, acorn prostitution Posted Oct 21st 2009 at 9:08 am in ACORN, Featured Story |
18730661 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/jokeefe/2009/10/21/acorn-video-prostitution-scandal-in-philadelphia-pa-part-i/ACORN+Video%3A+Prostitution+Scandal+in+Philadelphia%2C+PA+Part+I2009-10-21+16%3A08%3A24James+O%26%2339%3BKeefe
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From an article that will appear in tomorrow’s Chicago Tribune:
ACORN is in very deep, very public trouble, and the U.S. attorney general should appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate. What we know so far is due entirely to two amateur reporters, James E. O’Keefe III, 25, and Hannah Giles, 20, who managed to videotape a web of corrupt practices in ACORN offices. Dressed as a pimp and prostitute, O’Keefe and Giles walked into ACORN offices from New York to California and simply asked for business advice. ACORN officials were happy to provide it and were secretly recorded explaining exactly how to evade the law and scam the government. The tapes were riveting. Fox News rolled out a new one each night for a week, creating a firestorm of outrage and a burgeoning political scandal.
ACORN employees, without raising an eyebrow, much less calling the police, explained how the young sex workers could label themselves “performance artists,” underreport their income, evade taxes, fraudulently buy a house to ply their trade, and, worst of all, import underage girls from Central America to use as child prostitutes. One ACORN employee helpfully explained that the teenagers would even be tax-deductible since they would be “dependents,” living in the pimp’s house. Some states, led by California, are saying they will investigate. But this is a national scandal and there ought to be a full-scale national inquiry. To ensure impartiality — and the appearance of impartiality — political appointees at the U.S. Department of Justice should recuse themselves. This case demands an independent federal prosecutor.
Journalists need to ask themselves, how did this happen? How could they miss the corruption at ACORN? President Obama was once an ACORN lawyer, so the group is certainly significant enough to warrant media scrutiny. Then how did all the seasoned professionals get scooped by two students–James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles–one of whom isn’t old enough to legally drink?
ACORN’s many problems have been well known for quite a while, at least to anyone venturing beyond network newscasts and liberal blogs. As an organization, ACORN doesn’t just limit itself to churning out forged voter registrations. It’s a full-blown racketeering enterprise worthy of The Sopranos, and it finances its operations with the help of taxpayer money.
So how could the major media fail to hold ACORN to account all these years?
I have my pet theory.
Political correctness has been slowly rotting the establishment media to its core, to the point where few professional journalists would dare launch a serious investigation into the exalted Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now. Why? Simple: according to the tenets of political correctness, the racial makeup of the communities being “organized” automatically confers the presumption of moral superiority upon ACORN. So all those nasty rumors about ACORN must be no more than lies spread by racist propagandists.
Interesting press coverage from San Diego. ACORN holds a press conference to announce they are standing behind their employee, who was captured in undercover footage from James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles offering to help smuggle into the country underage prostitutes from El Salvador. The ACORN employee had suggested that the children be brought across the border in Tijuana, because he has “a lot of contacts there.” After the cameras stop rolling, we learn that ACORN has fired the employee…the truth will out.
Yesterday I picked up The Washington Post from my doorstep and scanned the front page for coverage of the latest ACORN scandal. Call me naive if you want to, but The Post is my hometown paper and I maintain high expectations. Yes, even from well-educated liberals in the elite media.
This turns out to be ”my bad,” as the kids say. Apparently I had failed to take into account what a huge news day it was. The Washington Post couldn’t possibly make room on page one for a story about a taxpayer-funded organization conspiring with a “pimp” and “prostitute” to create brothels for underage sex slaves from El Salvador. If they had done so they would not have had the space to publish a 5 by 7 inch photograph of “Principal Judy K.” squirting hand sanitizer on six-year-olds at Matsunaga Elementary School. The photograph is accompanied by an article titled, “Ready…Aim…Scrub!” Kids have germs? STOP THE PRESSES! Bob Woodward is doubtlessly kicking himself for missing that one. (Sorry Bob, you snooze, you lose).
Another front page stunner (column one, nine inches), informs the reader that grocery stores are slashing prices. It’s not an irrelevant story — something one might expect to find on page three perhaps…
But no, there on page three is a story about ACORN: “ACORN to Review Incidents.” It’s tempting to dwell on that gripping and informative headline, but let’s dive on into the content.
Tags: ACORN, acorn prostitute video, acorn scandal, Bob Woodward, Daily Show Posted Sep 18th 2009 at 12:40 pm in ACORN, Media Criticism |
501893 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/mflynn/2009/09/18/acorn-scandal-in-the-washington-post-ready-aim-scrub/ACORN+Scandal+in+The+Washington+Post%3A+Ready...Aim...Scrub%212009-09-18+19%3A40%3A00Maura+Flynn
WASHINGTON (AP) – The House voted Thursday to deny all federal funds for ACORN in a GOP-led strike against the scandal-tainted community organizing group that comes just three days after the Senate took similar action. “ACORN has violated serious federal laws, and today the House voted to ensure that taxpayer dollars would no longer be used to fund this corrupt organization,” said second-ranked House Republican Eric Cantor of Virginia.
The vote, on a provision attached to a student aid bill, was 345-75, with Democrats supplying all the “no” votes.
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With 70 miles of stunning beaches and picture-perfect weather all year round, having fun during the summer in San Diego doesn’t require a lot of money.
The city combines old-fashioned Mexican charm with a modern edge. In a city where the sun is always shining, it’s the perfect place to get away for a bit of relaxation or stimulation.
If you’re looking for trendy boutique hotels, an exploding culinary scene, or visiting the local ACORN to get your underage prostitutes smuggled across the Mexican border, you’re in the right place.
ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis has taken on the (daunting) task of defending ACORN in the mainstream media. Her Politico bio is here. **UPDATE** MSNBC videos have been removed from the site. They are a couple days old at this point and we aren’t certain the explanation at this time.
**This is a Part II of the ACORN San Bernardino exposé.
“[ACORN San Bernardino Office Supervisor Christina] Spach said Kaelke pretended to cooperate with O’Keefe and Giles because she feared for her safety.”
Miss Tresa Kaelke came off as the “cool” grandma type: ready to talk, listen and dive into something adventurous. She was very much straight out of the free-love and anti-war era. She was not there to discriminate; she was there to condone and get her twisted fill of gossip for the day.
Example: when we were in the office with her I noticed a rose on her white pants (front left side). I commented and said “I like your rose,” and she responded with something along the lines of, “Thanks, I just drew it myself.” It was actually a cute and well drawn rose… colorful and cute. If she hadn’t told me she drew it I would have assumed the pants came like that.
Tresa was elated to have such an interesting visit that Monday afternoon. We went in with the same scenario as all the past ACORN offices and she, upon learning our line of work and alleged purpose for the visit, began openly disclosing information about her sex life, criminal history and political involvement.
After Talking with Jim Miller (the man across the street), Tresa and I ended up talking by ourselves for several minutes. She gave me some advice on locations for my underage brothel (based on the political arena) and said that I should have a separate savings account for a lawyer so that if I do get into trouble with the authorities, having a high class lawyer will help my reputation. (more…)
This morning, the ACORN scandal was raised to Charlie Gibson in an interview on WLS AM Chicago’s “Don Wade & Roma Morning Show.” Listen to the audio here:
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TRANSCRIPT:
Don: Ok here’s my question, Senate bill yesterday passes cutting off funds to this group called ACORN. Now we got the…we got that bill passing, we got the embarrassing video of ACORN staff giving tax advice on how to set up a brothel with 13 year old hookers. It has everything you could want corruption and sleazy action at tax funded organizations that’s got government ties. But nobody’s covering that story why?
Charlie Gibson: (laugh) I don’t even know about it. Uh, so you got me at a loss, I don’t know. Uh, uh, but, but My goodness if it’s got everything including sleaziness in it we should talk about it this morning.
Roma: This is the American way…
Charlie Gibson: Well maybe, maybe that’s one you just leave to the cables. (more…)
After going undercover on the east coast, James and I headed to the west coast. We knew it was a risky endeavor but the results on the east coast were too good to ignore. We had to test our scenario in an opposite region. It is like a science experiment:
1) Ask A Question: What if a “prostitute” and her alleged law school boyfriend walk into ACORN seeking housing for an underage brothel to fund his future congressional campaign?
2) Do Background Research:
Learn as much about ACORN housing procedures and protocol as possible.
History of ACORN and their effect on the United States
3) Construct a Hypothesis: ACORN is corrupt and it is in their nature to promote and disguise illegal behavior.
4) Experiment: Baltimore, DC, Brooklyn, San Bernardino, and…
5) Analyze and draw a conclusion.
America-
James O’Keefe and I posed a question and gathered the evidence. We’ve run around this nation on a quest for truth unraveling the mystery of organized corruption.
Today House Republicans will introduce a bill that would end all federal funding to ACORN and its affiliates. Republicans are also sending a letter to President Obama on the same subject.
The action comes after the release, on the website BigGovernment, of three undercover videos showing ACORN employees in Baltimore, Washington DC, and New York City offering advice on how to evade taxes, cover up prostitution activity, and abet the use of minors in prostitution. In the wake of those disclosures, the U.S. Census cut its ties with ACORN, and yesterday the Senate voted 83-7 to cut off housing funds for the organization. (more…)
Now that a third ACORN video has surfaced, a pattern emerges of ACORN workers willing to help people engage in prostitution, tax fraud, housing fraud, and even human trafficking. Under federal law, a RICO investigation is now warranted. Three strikes and you’re out, ACORN.
Videos show ACORN employees offering to help two undercover reporters/filmmakers posing as a prostitute and pimp in falsifying tax returns and getting a federal loan to buy a house that they could use as a brothel for underage prostitutes smuggled in from El Salvador.
When the first video emerged from such a meeting in ACORN’s Baltimore office on Thursday, ACORN fired the two workers involved. When another video surfaced on Friday, this one from ACORN’s D.C. office, the two workers involved there were fired as well, and ACORN said that these two reporters had tried and failed to carry out this sting in other offices.
One such office where ACORN said these reporters tried and failed was New York City. Yet Monday, a third video surfaced from Brooklyn in New York City. Once again, the ACORN employees on the video advise the undercover duo on how to violate federal law by filing a false income tax return to qualify for a federal housing loan.
As one worker says on the video, “honesty is not going to get you the house.” Well, not if you’re engaged in a host of felonies. (more…)
This story has everything you could ever want – corruption, sleazy actions at tax-funded organizations, firings, government ties, sex, hookers. It is a network news director’s dream. Imagine the ratings. But almost no one is covering it.
Bruce Springsteen once wrote: “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come).” I doubt he expected that story of love gone wrong would become ideal political commentary for the group known as ACORN.
The small scandal showing an embarrassing video of Baltimore ACORN staffers looking like they were giving tax advice on how to set up a brothel, is now national news. — This story has everything you could ever want – corruption, sleazy actions at tax-funded organizations, firings, government ties, sex, hookers. It is a network news director’s dream. Imagine the ratings!
Only almost no one is covering it.
This is the news media in the era of Van Jones and President Obama. The major outlets cover what they want and create the themes they want. When they find something inconvenient, they let it pass. They didn’t like the Van Jones story, so they ignored it. The network news media liked the financial entity known as Fannie Mae, so they ignored that scandalous organization for years. ACORN is getting the same treatment. (more…)
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WASHINGTON (AP) – The Senate voted Monday to block the Housing and Urban Development Department from giving grants to ACORN, a community organization under fire in several voter-registration fraud cases.The 83-7 vote would deny housing and community grant funding to ACORN, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
The action came as the group is suffering from bad publicity after a duo of conservative activists posing as a prostitute and her pimp released hidden-camera videos in which ACORN employees in Baltimore gave advice on house-buying and how to account on tax forms for the woman’s income. Two other videos, aired frequently on media outlets such as the Fox News Channel, depict similar situations in ACORN offices in Brooklyn and Washington, D.C. (more…)
The investigative journalism of James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles has opened yet another chapter in the corruption-tinged history of ACORN. For most Americans, ACORN is a political organization, running voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote efforts at election-time. With a rather alarming regularity, the pop into the news cycle with allegations of fraudulent voter registrations and, even, voter fraud.
No doubt, the recent undercover videos from ACORN Housing offices in Baltimore, Washington, DC, and, now, New York, are shocking. I’m a long-time observer of ACORNapalooza, and I found myself in stunned, silent disbelief as the interviews unfolded. It wasn’t just the subject-matter. No, it was the fact that not one ACORN employee seemed to even flinch when presented with the ridiculous scenario of a pimp and a prostitute trying to get a mortgage to house a dozen or so underage El Salvadoran child-prostitutes. They just oozed seamlessly into conjecture about whether or not a child prostitute could be considered a “dependent” for tax purposes. What do these employees hear on a daily basis that this scenario was just another problem that needed fixing?
But even these videos, no matter how disturbing, are just part of the ACORN story. As, too, is the pattern of problems with the voter registration system. This past weekend, Brandon Darby discussed his experience with ACORN when he was coordinating relief in post-Katrina New Orleans. ACORN saw New Orleans as their “turf” and targeted Brandon and his colleagues, trying to intimidate them to either submit to their “leadership” or leave. This is a pattern readers of Big Government will soon hear more about.
In fact, in the coming days, you’ll learn a lot about the full ACORN story. It is an amazing story, in its own way. After waiting years for the mainstream media to finally peel back the ACORN layers, Big Government will have to take it upon itself to do so.
To start this, we are publishing an internal quasi-employee manual Big Government has obtained. Given to all ACORN employees, it isn’t your normal manual. It doesn’t discuss things like sick leave or vacation time, but, rather, as the title states, the “Principles and Foundations of ACORN.” How an organization communicates with the public is important. How it communicates to its own employees, however, provides a richer understanding of an organization’s nature.
The whole thing is worth a read. I draw your attention to just one sentence (ACORN emphasizes it with italics):
ACORN’s lifeblood is conflicts with targets outside the organization.
Think about that. ACORN’s lifeblood isn’t empowering disadvantaged communities nor lifting people out of poverty. It isn’t concerned about increasing economic growth to improve the lives of its members. It’s lifeblood is conflict. Conflict with targets. It actually thinks of the world outside itself as targets.
This recent scam, which was attempted in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia to name a few places, had failed for months before the results we’ve all recently seen. -Bertha Lewis, Chief Organizer, ACORN
So, we headed up to New York…  
Alinsky Rule #10, “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.”
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So far CNN has only reported on the breaking story on blatant ACORN CORRUPTION from angles that attempt to extricate the government funded “community organizing” enterprise from the extreme crime we caught on videotape.
First CNN pushed the false ACORN line that “[t]his film crew tried to pull this sham at other offices and failed.”
To set that record straight please check the Washington D.C. tape we dropped today at BigGovernment.com, which is also being aired on your cable news competitor with curiously higher ratings.
Now that ACORN lied to you, Jonathan Klein, what are you going to do?
Here’s what I have noticed from your coverage: You brought in the damage control crowd to FRAME the story. Before even airing our damning Baltimore video. You know your audience would turn on ACORN if you showed them the evidence. So instead you put your competitors in journalism in the crosshairs instead of airing a blockbuster report making massive waves elsewhere.
You even trotted out shameless Clinton era apologist Joe Conason to challenge the ETHICS of our expose. Unreal.
What about the ethics of those at ACORN caught on tape trying to help create a brothel featuring illegal immigrant age range 13-15 from El Salvador? (more…)
Below is the entirety of Andrew Breitbart's remarks during his Keynote address to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville last weekend. During Breitbart's 33 minute long address, he threatens to upend the entire media establishment, calling them out on their hypocrisy while demanding they change their ways,...
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