JournoList scandal is back and prepare for it to be a driving force in the news for quite some time. The Daily Caller published an article tonight indicating they’ve obtained emails from the JournoList and the initial details are as damning as we expected when the list-serv, founded by the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein in 2007, surfaced with the Dave Weigel kerfuffle last month.

Snippets from the article below, but make sure to read the whole thing at the Daily Caller and return to Big Journalism early and often as we unpack the details that emerge and track the fallout from this seminal event in the history of left-wing media bias. It’s unclear exactly what the Daily Caller has, but there’s certainly no indication from this article they’ve already laid all their cards out on the table.

According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.” (more…)

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.

(more…)

Way back in March–long before the James and Hannah “pimp and ho’ road show”– the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, held a hearing where serious fraud allegations were raised against ACORN. Rep. John Conyers pressed the subcommittee Chair, Rep. Jerry Nadler, to hold hearings on the charges, calling them “serious.” Rep. Nadler demurred, but assured the public that he would hold hearings if he received “credible evidence” of fraud.

It is a sure bet that Rep. Nadler and I agree on very, very little. However, I would hope we’d agree that video footage of possible conspiracy by ACORN employees to commit tax, mortgage or immigration fraud in five different jurisdictions, on both coasts of the US, would clear just about any bar that could be imagined for “credible evidence.”

Just in case Rep. Nadler is hanging with ABC’s Charlie Gibson and missed this whole story, the folks at the Republican National Lawyers Association have put together a handy video ‘cliff notes’ of the story. Click play, sit back and enjoy…

Everything you needed to know about the unorthodox roll out of the now-notorious ACORN sting videos was hidden in plain sight in my Sept. 7 column, “Katie Couric, Look in the Mirror.” ACORN was not the only target of those videos; so were Katie, Brian, Charlie and every other mainstream media pooh-bah.

They were not going to report this blockbuster unless they were forced to. And they were. What’s more, it ain’t over yet. Not every hint I dropped in that piece about what was to come has played itself out yet.Stay tuned.

When filmmaker and provocateur James O’Keefe came to my office to show me the video of him and his friend, Hannah Giles, going to the Baltimore offices of ACORN – the nation’s foremost “community organizers” – dressed as a pimp and a prostitute and asking for – and getting – help for various illegal activities, he sought my advice. In the past, Mr. O’Keefe created brilliant social satire that rocked his college campus and even made its way on to the talk-radio and cable-news shows, but the magnitude of his latest adventure had the potential to rock the political establishment.

I was awed by Mr. O’Keefe’s guts and amazed by the footage, but explained that the mainstream media would try to kill this important and illuminating expose about a corrupt and criminal political racket, and that the well-funded political left would go into “war room” mode, with 25-year-old Mr. O’Keefe and 20-year-old cohort Miss Giles in the cross hairs. I felt I had a moral obligation to protect these young muckrakers from the left and from the media, and to devise a strategy that would force the media’s hand. (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…)

When James O’Keefe came to my door in August, I was shocked by how young he looked. Kinda like Matthew Modine circa “Vision Quest.”

“Come on in,” I said, and I took him to my basement command center. He opened his laptop computer and showed me the very-hard-to-believe independent film investigative journalism project he had described to me over the phone

How can I describe the video I watched? Is it a put on? I almost can’t believe what I am seeing. But with regards to ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, I am quite cynical. So I do believe it.

But I still find myself wanting to believe it is fake.  It’s just too weird. It’s too wrong. But James continuously reassures me it’s real.

So who is James O’Keefe?

Morley Safer meets Sacha Baron Cohen, I think. Not precise. But you get the point.

This isn’t your mother’s “60 Minutes.” But then again, why would a twenty five-year old even think straight journalism? His crowd doesn’t even know who Don Hewitt is. They need it quick cut, set to music and packaged to go viral on YouTube.

From what I gather, James wants to speak to his twenty-something peers who have been asked to pay for unaccountable big government ventures like ACORN on their maxed-out generational credit card. To the tune of potentially billions. (more…)