By Matthew Vadum ——Bio and Archives--October 21, 2009
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However, in a newly released video, ACORN Housing Corp.’s Katherine Conway Russell directly rebuts those claims, citing a police report ACORN filed as evidence that she asked the filmmakers to leave the ACORN office in Philadelphia and called the police after the filmmakers asked suspicious questions.The Philadelphia video shows that no one working for ACORN ejected O’Keefe or Giles from the office or asked them to leave. If the Philadelphia police complaint depicted in the blog post was actually filed, that fact still doesn’t establish much because the video shows ACORN cooperating. If ACORN called the police, it was only after O’Keefe and Giles departed, which was long after ACORN bent over backwards to counsel the couple on establishing a brothel. The only time in the video the ACORN employee discusses the police is to assure O’Keefe and Giles that she wouldn’t call the police to turn them in. The only false claims on record are those that have been made knowingly by ACORN and Media Matters. Media Matters rushed to protect ACORN in a Sept. 18 blog post titled, “Wash. Post ignores ACORN filmmakers’ credibility problems,” in which the media criticism shop compounds the damage it previously tried to inflict on the reputation of O’Keefe and Giles. The blog item claims that the Washington Post in its coverage of the ACORN video saga “ignored facts which undermined the conservative filmmakers’ credibility.” Media Matters said
Some of the videotapes may have been taken illegally. The Post did not report that in secretly videotaping their conversations with ACORN employees, O’Keefe and Giles may have violated state criminal statutes in Maryland and California.Media Matters can’t seem to get over the fact that rules of evidence used in courtrooms don’t apply in journalism. If a journalist smuggles a fake weapon through airport security in order to expose weaknesses in baggage screening processes, doesn’t society benefit from the enterprise? Journalism is about truth-telling, not about putting people behind bars (though if there were any justice in the world, ACORN’s leadership would be in prison). Even if the secret videotaping was illegal, how does that single fact undermine the credibility of the filmmakers? Moreover, how is the concept of credibility even relevant here? The camera doesn’t lie. The videotapes shot by the couple show that ACORN employees were only too willing to facilitate criminal conduct. None of the ACORN workers shown in any of the videos released to date appear to have any moral reservations about helping a pimp and prostitute engage in illegal activity. Media Matters repeats the tiresome credibility allegations Sept. 24 and jumps the shark on Sept. 27 by accusing Chris Wallace of Fox News of trying to “salvage” O’Keefe’s credibility. In an Oct. 16 rant, Jamison Foser shrugged off the videos. “[S]ome conservative activists induced a statistically insignificant number of the organization’s low-level employees to behave badly,” he wrote. By the way, Foser is so far to the left that he thinks “Hardball” host Chris Matthews is a rabid right-winger. He refers to the TV talk show host as the “Clinton-hating, liberal-bashing misogynist Chris Matthews.” Foser used to be research director at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). On Sept. 28, Eric Boehlert refers to the “marginal ACORN story.” Boehlert claimed on Sept. 29 the videos were “not really journalism at all.” And then there’s this spin-doctoring from Sept. 20 and this bizarre subheading in a Sept. 22 post, “Ignoring mitigating facts, [Fox’s Megyn] Kelly previously suggested entire ACORN organization should be punished.” Is Megyn Kelly a broadcast journalist or a judge in a criminal court? What does the legal concept of mitigation have to do with journalism? Is it Kelly’s job to try to make ACORN look good? I could go on but I think you get the point. Finally, one of the very few items Media Matters posts about ACORN that’s worth reading is a Sept. 24 post by Boehlert in which he reposts a passage from a column by Slate.com media critic Jack Shafer. Shafer excoriates the mainstream media for ignoring the ACORN story. Boehlert highlights this passage from Shafer’s article:
The liberal advocacy group Media Matters for America complains that the ACORN videos, which aren’t a “major story,” are driving an “incomplete, misleading” media stampede. But Media Matters is wrong. Independent news organizations, including the Washington Post, the New York Post, and the Baltimore Sun, are chasing the ACORN story not because they’ve been bamboozled by the Breitbart exposé but because the dress-up stunt has pointed them toward what could be fertile grounds for wrongdoing.Indeed, Media Matters is wrong and this latest undercover video is a devastating blow to the George Soros-backed organization’s credibility.
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Matthew Vadum, matthewvadum.blogspot.com, is an investigative reporter.
His new book Subversion Inc. can be bought at Amazon.com (US), Amazon.ca (Canada)
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