Given that it’s the L.A. Times, this is a surprisingly strong editorial rebuke against ACORN:
Given all the scrutiny, one would have expected ACORN to be doing everything in its power to make sure its activities were squeaky clean. Yet since the initial video was released last week showing ACORN workers in Baltimore who appeared to be aiding and abetting criminal activity, activist filmmaker James O’Keefe has released two more showing similar behavior at ACORN offices in Washington and Brooklyn. The response from ACORN? Fire the workers involved and blame Fox News.
“We are the boogeyman for the right-wing and its echo chambers,” reads a self-serving statement released Saturday by ACORN’s chief organizer, Bertha Lewis. She claimed the videos were “doctored” and threatened legal action against Fox. What she didn’t do is apologize for the appalling and possibly illegal behavior of ACORN employees, acknowledge that the organization has serious internal problems and vow to correct them, or do what she should have done as soon as the scandal was revealed: resign.
AdvertisementO’Keefe’s hidden-camera methods are distasteful, and the extent to which his videos were edited is unknown. Their content is nonetheless devastating to ACORN — so much so that, on Monday, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to withhold federal housing funds from the group. That’s a shame because ACORN does worthwhile work in poor communities, helping people avoid foreclosure, giving them tax help and, yes, registering them to vote. If ACORN is to survive and retain a shred of credibility, it needs to stop deflecting blame and clean house.
I have to laugh though, at one line in the above editorial: “O’Keefe’s hidden-camera methods are distasteful, and the extent to which his videos were edited is unknown.”
As opposed to every episode of 60 Minutes that have aired on CBS since the show debuted in 1968? As Jonah Goldberg wrote in early 2001, before 9/11 and the birth of the Blogosphere:
60 Minutes has used secret cameras for decades and earned awards and ratings for it. But when 60 Minutes used a hidden camera to snoop on another journalist a few years ago, heads exploded in the hallowed halls of elite journalism. Why? Because we don’t do that sort of thing to our own. We only screw outsiders. Why do you think the media despised Linda Tripp so? It wasn’t just that she made life for Bill Clinton so uncomfortable; she was a scab, using the very techniques that thousands of journalists use each and every day. And she did it to protect herself! Nevertheless, when a private citizen employs such tactics she’s seen as an immoral betrayer of a friend. When a journalist does it, she’s a “news hound” — and an ethical one at that.
Of course that was before blogging made everyone into a potential journalist, and smashed the legacy media’s guild mentality. And speaking of September 11th here’s a telling anecdote. That night, there was, understandably, a news blackout around the rubble of what at the start of the day had been the World Trade Center. Beyond the risk of bodies appearing on the 6:00 PM news, very likely the New York authorities didn’t want a gaggle of journalists scampering about the still smoldering rubble and debris, both slowing down rescue efforts, and risking further injury, or worse. But Diane Sawyer of ABC grabbed a cameraman and a small camcorder, and wrapped the camera with a roll of paper towels to disguise it. Wearing filter masks and goggles, they wandered into the cordoned-off area of the WTC and attempt to see what they could see, and tape what they could tape. If that’s considered acceptable television journalism, then why are James O’Keefe’s hidden-camera methods “distasteful” to the L.A. Times?
Is the difference merely Diane Sawyer’s establishment center-left politics, or does the venue — a TV conglomerate whose predecessor radio network dates back over 60 years versus an upstart Website also play a factor in the Times’ double-standard?
Certainly wouldn’t be the first time for the legacy media.
If the ACORN personnel had called the police rather than working with the two reporters to hide activities, the LA Times would have been more than glad.
Sorry if I am nit-picking, but isn’t Diane Sawyer at ABC?
Stu,
Thanks–fixed.
Diane Who!!!
Look on the bright side, the longer the laydown media continues to lay down the more opportunities people like James and Hannah (grrr) have to expose stuff like ACORN. And make money. And create a whole new generation of muckrackers. The libbies really should have seen this coming.
You beat me to it, you rat. I’ve been looking at ABC TV hidden camera stories on YouTube all morning.
The high and middle dudgeon of the legacy press toward hidden-camera stories does seem to be a little selective.
“[...] activist filmmaker James O’Keefe [...]” – do I sense here some contempt in the use of the term “activist”?
Time and again, LA Times shows how holographic liberals definitions can be -
Their is no doubt they are pissed that “one of they’re own” got tagged by hidden camera. They like most leftwinger believe that only they should have the power to do something like this. Another group thats famous for this type of BS are corrupt cops. They hate when anyone reviews they’re actions.
The simple fact is they all these groups believe that
1. They are above the law.
2. They are the law.
3. They are the only ones that should have this or other powers.
Obviously, the deciding factor is whether or not harm/good is done to/for Democrats and their Party, or whether or not harm/good is done to/for Republicans and their Party.
The Democrat News Media must maintain its strict code of conduct.
Just came across this blog today, and really enjoyed it! Keep up the good work.
I posted a hilarious YouTube video about Obama and the current debate over the size of government I found today on my site. Check it out:
http://rjmoeller.com/2009/09/obama-and-the-white-stripes-a-youtube/
Students in classrooms all over the country are secretly filming teachers and each other in the hopes of getting the goods for Youtube. There is no stopping this now. It’s a part of our cultural fabric, thanks 60 minutes! Do you think these future voting citizens will put up with the MSM in its current form?
The horse is out of the barn. Expect to be filmed when you least expect it. They say London has public or private cameras zoomed in on just about every square inch of the city. Many cities in the US are headed in the same direction.
O’Keefe’s hissy fit over hidden-camera methods is akin to his distaste of the alternate news media. It’s all about loss of control of the news delivery system in this country.
Go away MSM already.
This LA Times opinion piece is a striking example of crocodile tears, it’s too little, and it’s too late. Just think if these undercover tapes had exposed a similarly revolting carnival of obscenity in a conservative apparatus such as the NRA, or a traditional national entity like a Christian church? There certainly would be no mention of the methods employed to obtain the damning evidence of scandal and crime. There would be no tolerance for the notion of a second chance to be “squeaky clean”. There would be a maelstrom of fuming rage, widespread smearing and slander of the entire right-of-center edifice, and a relentless call for the impeachment of the Community Organizer in Chief who used defended and funded the filthy operation to serve his political agenda. Usually this kind of smear campaign by thrle Left and its Pravda, the MSM, would be wide off the mark. But had a Repuplican President been involved up to his eyeballs with such a right wing sewage factory exactly as Obama is with ACORN and SEIU, then called for his impeachment wouldn’t be far off the mark
We need to learn WHO authored the $8.5 BILLION handout for ACORN.
We need to find out WHO suggested ACORN be used to conduct the 2010 census.
We need to audit every single ACORN-assisted “home loan” over the last 10 years.
We need to learn more about the lawsuit in which Obama defended ACORN.
We need to learn exactly how much money Obama has funneled to the cesspot of sewage.
We need to learn how much money and services were provided for Obama’s Chicago-style machine over the last eight years.
This debacle is cancerous enough to bring this radical administration crashing down. It could’nt happen fast enough for the sake of our nation.
If what you are doing is not wrong…why would you care? The ACORN filming were not intimate moments. HOWEVER, they were learning moments for America. I honestly do not see one thing wrong with what O’Keefe and friend did.
If they end up needing a defense fund, please let us know and I will be pleased to contribute
Newspapers, CBS (diane) etc are no longer “main stream media”
They are elitist. Their words are predictable and we need to get past them. Just as the trolls are on PJM. We always know what their attitude is and can almost predict the words they will vomit.
The EM is left of having rational explanations, and do NOT seem to realize that what happens to America, happens to them also. Stupidity/irrational thoughts and words reign supreme in the EM. anything for sensationalism.
The EM will look good in little brown shirts…hhmmmm
Talk about concealed cameras and double standards!
Check out this picture that just surfaced showing the size of the crowd of “tens of thousands” or “60,000-70,000″ that surrounded Capitol Hill on 9/12 (http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=6500 ).
Have you ever noticed someone who gets a traffic ticket and is ready to blame everyone and everything but themselves. Sometimes, it is best to say, “Yes, I was speeding and they nailed me with the radar, there goes my insurance rates” or in the case of Acorn, “Oh my G-d, they nailed us to the wall, I wonder how many more crimes they caught our employees encouraging and abetting.”
Instead we hear cries of, They are amateurs, they don’t realize they are targeting the wrong side, they are using hidden cameras, if they would have brought out a professional film crew the video and our offices could have been presented in a better position, filming our lower level employees was a dirty trick, we are going to sue.”
Of course litigaion will mean exposing the records and the probable links to congress and the White House. Oh please Acorn, let’s start the litigation or is there some reason you are hesitating.
Oh in Maryland, where Acorn has lost its charter, I suppose it is illegal to film an illegal operation performing illegal services without the consent of the participants. This is true comedy, way better than the putrid pablum produced by Hollywood.
O’Keefe and Giles along with Breitbart are offering a real alternative to the Obama Directed Propaganda of the nearly dead msm. We are witnessing history in the making. America is like a blind person that is given the gift of sight. The gift of sight is a gift of Freedom. The gift of sight is the gift of having real news delivered to your TV and your computer without being evaluated through the Socialist Prism that is our current news propaganda bureaus.
How long have we been subjected to lies and propaganda posing as news from the Left? This would make a great article for some of you aspiring writers, but I will estimate 85 years.
Praise the Lord, Freedom, Freedom, my people have Freedom at last.
I wait in gleeful anticipation to hear the death rattle of the so-called self-named Fourth Estate. We will celebrate while you take your dying dump, you lying sanctimonious, self-righteous frauds. Yipeee!
Morton Doodslag – wonder if we might have the same roots in Holland and if we therefore have a very well defined sense of freedom. As long as America remains the land of the free and the home of the brave, there is hope for the rest of the world.
God bless America!!!!!
The LA Times sounds like some New Yorkers defending the mob’s prostitution, drugs, murders etc. because they kept the neighborhood safe for grandmonthers and kids.
I thought the media hypocrisy reached its nadir when CNN was denouncing “Joe the Plumber” for blogging about the war because he was not a “legitimate” media person while simultaneously hyping its IReporter scheme.
Of course this is just a newspaper denouncing a tactic of the broadcast media, so they can claim they are less than fully hypocritical or somesuch.
What a joke.
Oh Oh. I see Obama appointing a new Czar to over see the ACORN group! That will fix it.
ABC TV hidden camera stories …
Why, they created stories if none existed. Didn’t they expose unsanitary conditions in a food (chicken?) processing plant by planting the unsanitary conditions themselves?
21. How about a Youtube Czar to take down inconvenient youtube postings? May be Obie should just call that Google guy to clamp down on the out-of-control youtube. That Google guy got multi-millions “stimulus”, about time for him to do something useful for his Oneness.
“That’s a shame because ACORN does worthwhile work in poor communities, helping people…”
…plan to defraud the federal government in order to set up international child prostitution rings.
Very worthwhile.
Obama’s ACORN III
Parts I and II of “Obama’s ACORN” dealt with our president’s pre-presidency, unseemly associations with the smarmy Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now and the group’s excursion into tax evasion, cop evasion, pimping, prostitution, and Latina pedophilia.
There’s more on ACORN’s rap sheet, much more, including its involvement in the sub-prime mortgage debacle and subsequent implosion of the banking industry.
As the waters roil around ACORN–being dumped as 2010 Census volunteers, the Senate voting 83-7 to defund the organization, and a fourth ”pimp video” surfacing, http://bit.ly/1uADKY– there’s a glimmer of hope that, finally, a full-scale congressional investigation will be launched to look into just how corrupt ACORN is.
It’s only a glimmer given Obama’s long association with the group and given the fact ACORN serves as a virtual sub-section of the ruling Democratic Party, but hope springs eternal.
One area of the group’s activities has been overshadowed by recent developments even though its involvement has cost the American taxpayer hundreds of billions of dollars.
Among its various other enterprises, ACORN maintains its own mortgage company, AHC, which touts its affiliations with the largest banks in the country. It was thanks to those affiliations, and pressures exerted on those banks that AHC contributed mightily to the collapse of the mortgage industry. . . .
(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com)
I’m seeing another ‘under the bus’ moment beginning to take shape. And the wheels go round and round! THUMP!! heh.
Why are these methods “distasteful”? And why is a major newspaper being so elitist. O’Keefe and partner are merely poor, undocumented journalists doing the work that regular American journalists do not want to do.
I think Congress should enact legislation to give the undocumented amnesty, or at least a pathway to full journalism.
SEIU is worse IMO they are smarter and play a higher level game. They are the closest thing this country has to a Marxist organization.
It’s the INTERNATIONAL in Service Employees International Union that I wonder about.
They also subsidize ACORN and even share some mailboxes w/ ACORN
The LA Times? well…time isn’t on their side and I won’t miss them.
Ed – you use the term “legacy media.” Might I suggest “dinosaur media” instead?
At this point, their only legacy is that they’re dinosaurs, swiftly going the way of the original dinosaurs.
(BTW, I didn’t come up with the term, darn it – but I stole it fair and square. :-p )
Now is the time to kick ACORN and its fellow travelers while they’re down. There needs to be a concerted effort to expose all the links of this octopus. Find and publicize all of its front organizations. Show the overlapping boards of directors, the shared mailboxes, the money-laundering mutual donations. Expose the politicians and corporations and foundations and government agencies that have engaged in back-scratching and log-rolling with this outfit. Trace every dollar back to its origin, whether it’s George Soros, a captive HUD agency, a co-opted mortgage lender, or a union slush fund. Pick out individuals entangled with them, publicize their names, and punish and embarrass and threaten them in line with Alinsky’s Rules. Shine a bright light on these filthy cockroaches and smash them into paste.
Ed,
Ha, I tried to comment at the L.A. Times on that VERY POINT but I got twisted up trying to get an account and log in. I’m glad you did a column on it.
These tasteless tactics to expose a taxpayer-funded organization that offered to assist with a slavery operation really cannot be tolerated. I’m sure that those who ran the Underground Railroad are spinning delicately in their graves, with their pinky-bones aloft.
The use of hidden cameras was “distasteful” because it deprived the LA Times of plausible deniability. Without the hidden camera, it would have been nothing but a he said she said situation which the LAT could ignore. Since they couldn’t do that they had to take a stand, which they deeply resented (which makes me doubt the sincerity of their condemnation).
Barbara Skolaut wrote:
Ed – you use the term “legacy media.” Might I suggest “dinosaur media” instead?
I prefer the term “mushroom media” — they keep you in the dark and feed you bullsh*t.
Screw the LA Times they are what u call SISSY JOURNALISM LITTLE BIT***
It would be interesting to check back with the ladies of Acorn who were fired due to the tapes.
Were they given severance? Hush money??
Was facilitating criminal activity part of their Acorn training?
Do they know of real criminals who benefited from Acorn council? How?
Wealth of information. Something for the rest of us to do.
You know those missing kids on milkcartons and grocery bilboards, the ones whose parents are reduced to tying ribbons on the tree and reposting another flyer when the old one gets torn off.
Those parents opinion of a systematic criminal org like ACORN – I like to know what they think it.
The wrong ox was gored. Faked videos of exploding gas tanks were OK. Faked evidence against the wrong president was OK. Real evidence against the wrong group is not OK.
What was that minority percentage that trusts the MSM? I’ll bet it’s a little lower this week than last.
Trust is earned, slowly over time. It is quickly lost and seldom regained. Say goodbye to the propaganda organizations that claim to be mainstream media. They have chosen suicide. I think it started with Duranty.
Has anyone seen Charlie Gibson and Jerry Springer at the same time?
60 Minutes started with its hidden camera pieces with “The Clinic on Morse Avenue”, which aired Feb 15, 1976, in a piece that detailed Medicaid fraud. (Ref: Tick…Tick…Tick…: The long and Turbulent Times of 60 Minutes by David Blum)
Hopefully this is the dawn of a new Mike Wallace.
MarkD is spot on. There is nothing new here. The Elite media has a very long history of manipulating its viewers and showing them only what the Elites deemed appropriate. And they cannot stand that two kids in Halloween costumes just broke a major story – a story the Elite Media chose to ignore – using the very techniques the Elite Media developed so many years ago.
Besides being a criminal enterprise Acorns must be the stupidest people alive. I’ve seen more convincing pimp’n'ho Halloween costumes.
bandit, if you’d ever had to actually deal with government employees, social workers and groups like ACORN, you’d see that, yeah, they really staffed by some of the stupidest people alive!
And the L.A. Times is one of the stupidest papers around.
If any here think ACORN or the MSM is on the ropes and will bend any time soon they are fooling themselves.
I’ve had this exact experience of being criticized for providing the evidence needed to make my case. After a decade on the Board of an organization a new President arrived and began a war on the more conservative elements. I eventually resigned and left. After being informed this person was still, a year later, so obsessed with getting me that she was creating “evidence” to take to the cops did I really do some digging. I eventually stumbled across her postings on a website detailing all her perfidy and printed out and submitted 200 pages of the evidence the Board had demanded before I resigned.
One might think that vindication was at hand. One would be wrong. After she was forced to “resign” (she was ultimately just moved to a different location) by the head office of the organization they made it clear they had much more of a problem with me printing and submitting the evidence than the officials scheming and lies.
The moral of the story here is to never think you can really reform an organization this corrupt. They must be completely dismantled. No further proof of this position is needed than to note that ACORN sees this as a training problem. Does any one really need to be trained to not support sex-slavery? Just to think that is too show the complete moral bankruptcy of this organization from the top down.
the organization has serious internal problems
Seriously stupid employees being just oneof them.
HIDDEN CAMERAL NES IS DISTASTEFUL says the LA Times?
http://www.gradethenews.org/pages/homeless%20treatment.htm
You know, I’m sure they’ve participated in it just as their comrades to the north have.
Their crime wasn’t having a Hidden Camera:
Their crime was being CONSERVATIVE with a Hidden Camera!
The bright lining in the dark cloud of all this is that people will wonder why they don’t hear stories about things like this in the MSM and will switch over to Fox to find out what is really happening and won’t go back to the old pathetic MSM outlets they used to patronize. Less viewers, less ad revenues and eventually the MSM will be obsolete and out of business. Hip, hip, hooray.
The difference to the Times is that the target in this case is someone that the Times supports.
The left wing media is beyond redemption. They have no decency. It has now bin proven that they are willing to sacrifice 13 year old sex slaves to protect their political allies.
When One Lies Down with Dogs, Expect Fleas
We’ve seen it before, countless times before, when rapacious governments seize control of a nation’s media outlets–the daily press, television, radio, periodicals.
It’s SOP for repressive regimes such as those in the U.S.S.R., Nazi Germany, and most recently in Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela, to seize media outlets to insure they pump out only state-sponsored propaganda.
It’s a very effective tactic for totalitarians. It keeps supporters content, it squelches opponents, and it makes things quite comfy for despots with the rabble kept in the dark over what’s really going on in their countries.
The United States has never had the misfortune of suffering a state-controlled, state-run media. Until now.
I should qualify that statement.
America’s mass media is not actually controlled by the leftist government of Barack Hussein Obama and his cohorts.
Rather, in a unique, historical twist, our media have willingly surrendered their journalistic integrity and abandoned their moral, ethical responsibility to objectively report the news. They have of their own volition become the lackeys of Obama.
In a sense, that’s even worse than government seizures.
One problem is, our mass media is no pretty woman anymore. The poor things are just being used and they crave attention and recognition, in addition to appreciating the opportunity to spout their own bile. Fewer and fewer people are buying their papers and magazines, or buying into the slanted tripe served up on television “news.”
And with good reason. Examples of the media surrender are innumerable.
They range from the failure to report on Obama’s numerous flubs during his campaign for the presidency, to the overkill of dozens of Newsweek covers over the course of a year, to the conscious misrepresentations of recent events, to not pointing out that when Rep. Joe Wilson called Obama a liar Obama was lying, to the New York Times burying a story showing is hero’s close ties with the radical ACORN: http://bit.ly/33tm3.
Other recent instances of journalistic prostitution include:
. The failure of the print media such as the Times and the Washington Post to review Mark Levin’s best seller, Liberty and Tyranny, even after it sold over a million copies, http://bit.ly/18B5Us,
. The Post ignoring its own poll since it showed that the more Americans understood Obamacare the more they disliked it, http://tinyurl.com/qyrce7.
. ABC and NBC refusing to air an ad criticizing that reform while falling all over themselves to give Obama airtime to pitch his plot: http://bit.ly/WguyC.
. And the mass of the mass media vastly undercounting the turnout for last Saturday’s huge anti-Obama march in Washington: http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1216.
It’s gut wrenching, sort of, to watch former stalwarts of American culture, such as the “old, grey lady,” fall by the wayside. Then, again, when journalistic ho’s, just like other ho’s, surrender their integrity, well, they get their due comeuppance.
By the grace of God, . . .
(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com)
When One Lies Down with Dogs, Expect Fleas
And when one lies down with whores, you can expect to get a lot worse than fleas. Isn’t it syphilis of the SDT’s that ultimately causes insanity? I think the MSM contracted it from the Kennedy family many years ago and now their collective brains are rotting from it.
But I think the terminal end is within sight.
ABC, NBC, CBS … RIP. May the Devil have mercy on your souls.
Smile you’re on Candid Camera♪♫♪♫!
I like Google.