Wash. Post ignores ACORN filmmakers' credibility problems
A Washington Post article about recently released ACORN videotapes quoted Andrew Breitbart as saying the incident "is the Abu Ghraib of the Great Society," but the article did not make clear that no fraud or harm came to the government as a result of ACORN's actions. Moreover, the Post ignored facts which undermined the conservative filmmakers' credibility and ignored Breitbart's role in providing the videos to Fox News for aggressive promotion.
Post did not make clear that the government was not harmed by ACORN's actions
ACORN provided only counseling to the activists and no fraud or harm came to the government as a result of the sessions. The article did not mention that there is no evidence the ACORN employees provided anything beyond the counseling sessions to conservative filmmaker James O'Keefe and Townhall.com columnist Hannah Giles, who dressed as a pimp and prostitute and secretly videotaped the sessions. It also did not report that the government was not defrauded in anyway as a result of the employees' actions, despite reporting that Congress voted to "defund the organization, handing conservative Republicans a major victory." The article added that conservatives "have long seen the liberal group -- which offers housing and other services, including voter registration, to the poor -- as a shady operation devoted to electing liberals and siphoning off taxpayer money for a permanent underclass."
Interactions occurred at a small percentage of total number of ACORN offices nationwide. O'Keefe and Giles have posted video of interactions with ACORN employees at five offices. The Post did not report that those offices represent a fraction of ACORN locations nationwide. According to its website, ACORN has more than 100 offices, with locations in 41 states and the District of Columbia.
Post ignored facts that undermine the filmmakers' credibility
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.
Post reported activists removed from Philadelphia ACORN office but "disputed" ACORN's "account" of length of time they were in the office. From the article:
In Philadelphia, Neil Herrmann, ACORN's lead organizer there, said the couple was kicked out after talking to a counselor "for a few minutes." They called to set up an appointment the day before the visit.
"At first when the counselor came," she wasn't going to take them back," Herrmann said. "But they had made an appointment. When he mentioned the 13-year-old girls, they were asked to leave."
O'Keefe disputed Herrmann's account, saying "we talked to them for more than a few minutes."
ACORN emailed a copy of a Philadelphia police report dated July 24 to The Post to verify its account that police were called and the couple was shown the door. O'Keefe is named on the report. [Post, 9/18/09]
The Post ignored that O'Keefe and Breitbart previously claimed they were never turned away. Contrary to the Post's suggestion that O'Keefe only disputed the amount of time the filmmakers spent at the Philadelphia office, both O'Keefe and BigGovernment.com publisher Breitbart have claimed they were never turned away at all. As Media Matters for America has documented, during the September 13 edition of Fox News' America's News HQ, senior correspondent Eric Shawn asked O'Keefe, "ACORN says that you went to, what, five other places around the country where they kicked you out. ... [D]id you find ethical, honest ACORN employees in any of the places that you went to that kicked you out and said, 'No, we're not going to do this. We're not going to cooperate. We're not going to have ACORN help you'?" O'Keefe responded that the people at ACORN are "liars" and that he "[a]bsolutely" wanted an apology and later added: "[N]one of the facilities kicked us out. That's a lie." Breitbart also has claimed, "There's no place, as ACORN tried to state, that kicked them out based upon the premise that they were doing something nefarious."
Giles and Flynn have similarly argued that all ACORN offices visited were complicit. On the September 16 edition of Fox News' Hannity, Sean Hannity asked Giles, "[Y]ou didn't go into one office, and they said, 'We're not going to help you do anything like that?' " Giles responded, "No." According to a September 16 article on the conservative website Human Events, Mike Flynn, the editor-in-chief of BigGovernment.com, said in an exclusive interview: "It's not even just one random employee, it's so comprehensive, it's everywhere [O'Keefe] went. What shocks me is when you watch the videos, they don't even flinch."
The Post reported "O'Keefe dismissed" ACORN's claim "that the videos were doctored" but ignored evidence that they were. The Post reported that "ACORN has said that the videos were manipulated" and added that O'Keefe dismissed [ACORN CEO Bertha] Lewis's assertion that the videos were doctored. 'They've lied every step of the way,' he said." But one video reportedly "left out" an ACORN employee's statement that it would have nothing to do with prostitution business. According to a report by CNN's Casey Wian on the September 17 edition of Lou Dobbs Tonight, the filmmakers edited San Bernardino ACORN organizer Tresa Kaelke's statement from one of the videos that ACORN would not associate itself with prostitution. Wian said: "Left out of the originally released tape but included in a transcript the filmmakers later released is Kaelke's statement that ACORN would have nothing to do with their prostitution business."
Post ignored Breitbart's use of Fox News for aggressive promotion of the video
Post highlights Breitbart's connections with the video; ignores Fox News' involvement. From the Post article:
When O'Keefe had filmed the first two videos -- in the District and Baltimore -- a friend urged him to share his project with Andrew Breitbart, a conservative Internet entrepreneur who had plans to launch an anti-liberal site called BigGovernment.com. Breitbart said he was skeptical after a June phone call with O'Keefe about what he had, but when the video was rolling in his basement office in Los Angeles in late July, Breitbart said, he gasped.
Breitbart, who also has a column that appears in the Washington Times, advised O'Keefe to roll out the videos one by one, rather than at once. He said he predicted the mainstream media would try to ignore the story, and after a day "poof, it would be over."
"When I saw these videos, I couldn't help thinking, this is the Abu Ghraib of the Great Society," said Breitbart, who put the videos on BigGovernment.com. "Everybody that is a conservative news junkie thinks that ACORN is the most important institution for us to uncover to the American public."
The strategy worked. As ACORN's fortunes have fallen, those of O'Keefe and Giles have risen. O'Keefe said he has received hundreds of requests for interviews and his inbox has thousands of e-mails. Giles and O'Keefe have become Facebook sensations, with fan clubs and testimonial walls. "Hannah Giles is HOTT!" reads the motto of one of her fan club sites. "Beware the Acorn Exterminator!" [Post, 9/18/09]
In promoting videos, Breitbart gave Fox the "exclusive." During the September 9 edition of his Fox News program, Glenn Beck previewed an "exclusive" that would air on his program the next day, which he claimed would make "things change a lot for those in power, " and aired snippets of O'Keefe's video in the ACORN Baltimore office. Beck suggested the video was the "exclusive stuff" that he predicted the media would be "talking about" instead of health care. On September 10, Beck interviewed Giles and credited Breitbart for starting the story, calling him "one of the "great journalists of our time."
Fox News frequently mentioned Breitbart and his website in reporting on video. For instance, on September 10, the website was mentioned on programs such as Glenn Beck, The O'Reilly Factor (according to a Nexis search), Hannity, Happening Now, America's Newsroom, and Special Report. Mediaite.com's Robert Quigley wrote on September 10 that Breitbart knows "how to promote: he went on Fox News this morning [on America's Newsroom] to discuss his 'exclusive' (and happened to mention his website a decent handful of times during the interview), and he got his video placed as the top story on Foxnews.com, ahead of arguably bigger stories like Joe Wilson's outburst during Obama's healthcare speech last night."
Fox ran wild with false murder allegation made in ACORN video
Fox News repeatedly falsely reported ACORN employee killed her former husband. Fox News repeatedly promoted the fake claim that an ACORN employee killed her former husband without fact-checking the allegation or indicating that it had contacted ACORN for a response. On September 15 and 16, Fox News devoted significant programming to O'Keefe and Giles' video of their interactions with Tresa Kaelke, who claimed she murdered her ex-husband and gave advice on how to run a brothel. After the video was released, Kaelke stated that she had merely been attempting to "shock them as much as they were shocking me," and the San Bernardino police confirmed that investigators found former husbands "alive and well."
Hannity asked Giles if she had verified the murder, and Giles said: "[W]e're working on that." On his Fox News show, Hannity asked Giles, "Have you ever checked to see if in fact she had a husband that was killed?" Giles stated, "[W]e're working on that." Hannity later stated, "So she's on tape admitting that she plotted to kill and had her husband killed, but we don't know if it's true yet." During a later segment, country music singer John Rich said, "[W]hat kind of screening process are they going through that they let a lady who admits to killing her husband standing right there?"
Transcript
From the September 17 edition of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight:
WIAN: The video comes on the heels of one from an ACORN office in San Bernardino. An employee there said she previously worked as a madam, offered business advice on running a brothel, and claims she got away with killing her husband, a story she now says she made up to play along with her visitors.
KAELKE: I apologize for that to ACORN. But it was a joke. It's still a joke. Nothing was true. And that's all there is to it.
WIAN: Left out of the originally released tape, but included in a transcript the filmmakers later released, is Kaelke's statement that ACORN would have nothing to do with their prostitution business.
The ACORN windmill has been gored...you can stop tilting.
That metaphor makes no sense.
Or perhaps I should call it an allusion. But it still makes no sense.
Are you sure? I'm not trying to be contrarian, but the the image comes from Don Quixote who, in his ridiculous imagination, took the windmills for real foes. The wind mills weren't, of course. In this case, the ACORN was quite a real foe.
I think going after ACORN is waste anyones time
Yes, the banks will cost the taxpayers billions, if not trillions, but let's go after ACORN which has received 1.5 million dollars a year over the last 15 years.
I'd double check that number if I were you. I'll get you started:
ACORN $
lol..he just did...if you can read that is.
It's 3.5 million. I was wrong there. But my point still stands.
Thanks, but not surprising, your link doesn't even address my claim. Plus, can you please link to something that is not a joke? NRO? Really?
It could mean that there is a credibility issue surrounding the filmmakers and the validity of the edited tapes.
But what would anyone want to see the unedited tapes?
I wonder?
Most likely you are correct. But we still don't know if there are any mitigating circumstances. Were the targets coached? At any point did they makes it clear they weren't going to help in a certain area?
We deserve to see the whole story. No real journalist does what O'Keefe has, no real journalist thinks he is above accountability. And likewise, FOX acted recklessly in promoting the videos without checking them. Now the film makes are whining because CNN actually had the audacity to mention the more full context of the films, when CNN has asked repeatedly for the film makers' input!
What else can we create to doubt these video's validity. Wow, we can play this game all day long.
Straw man fallacy. I think we should just keep a running tally of the number of fallacies you commit.
I can't believe you don't think we should question the videos. Did you forget about video number 4? In that video, the woman advises brags about running her own escort service and about killing her husband. It's right there on tape!
Except she was messing with the film makers. Woops! The police report shows she never killed her husband and never ran an escort service. Yes, but why should we question the tapes? We would be crazy, right?
It's called a track record, right on...
In my opinion, ACORN was taking a proactive stance and the workers on the tape were fired for PR reasons.
So guilty or not, they are no longer there.
What I am talking about, is that there may be evidence that the ACORN people on tape may have made other comments a'la the Sacramento case.
So until the unedited video is shown, we will never know.
Apologies to Mark Knopfler
Yet another Tommy response in which he creates an ad hominme circumstantial fallacy. Rather than trying to argue a point, you resort to the motivation of the poster. That's illogical. The point stands that the film makers are lying. That in turns means we are not getting the full story.
I love it when liberals haul out the vocabulary gymnastics they learned in college debate class. When they can't directly refute the point they always resort to straddling their linguistic balance beam. How did I do?
And you thereby create another logical argument. I specifically addressed your point beyond naming the fallacy. You failed to address mine, but resorted to mocking, which isn't an argument.
By the way, what the f** do you mean by "straddling ...[a] linguistic balance beam?" That image makes no sense.
Oh, the irony.
Did you not read the item carefully? The film makers have edited the films and then lied about it. In the 4th film they released, they didn't realize that their target was playing with them, matching their outrageous behavior with her own, and making things up. She said she killed her husband; her husband is alive. The film makers didn't even bother to check this out.
I mean she refers them to a guy across the street... doesn't that seem strange for "just kidding"? Yes, she has been exposed for lying about her husband. Does that make her a better Acorn Rep, or a worse one?
I just don't see any credibility problem, unless you believe ACORN, and they have been exposed as serial liars.
Is the video edited? Sure for time, but does any of the editing put words in their mouths, words they didn't say? Nope.
These film makers are amateurs, so they won't be held to the same standard. O'Keefe is openly defiant and doesn't think anyone should question him.
However, FOX news should be held up to the Dan Rather standard. Hannity called for Rather's firing for running with a poorly-sourced story. Hannity has done much worse when he aired the 4th tape. And so did Beck.
Were they kicked out of the Philly office? Does the police report really verify anything except that a report was made? Be careful of a Rope - a - dope... the Philly video might still come out.
Is the fact that the law doesn't allow a person to record someone without their consent really relevant? Would you arrest 60 Minutes?
Because of hard economic times, it sells more papers when you titillate and appeal to the prurient interests of your readers. Mix in innuendo of fraud from minority interests coupled with the rage and vociferousness of the lunatic fringe against government bailouts and the long time emnity from the GOP for Acorn. That makes it a story too tempting to passup or investigate. Even as the full story is told, the damage against the organization has been done and it's reputation irreparably besmirched.
Apparently enough for 172 democrats in the House to vote to yank all federal funding from ACORN.
Apparently enough for 50 democrat senators to yank all federal funding from ACORN.
Apparently enough for the federal census bureau to sever all ties with ACORN.
Filmmaker's credibility? Apparently enough...
Wesley lists indisputable facts and you say prove it. great work.
That's a clever way to dodge the fact that the film makers have been caught lying and other dishonesty. As far as congress and the census bureau, I think you might question they based their judgment on legality or political expediency.
Congratulations! Yet another logical fallacy--red herring! Rather than respond to you, question mark Tommy, we should just keep a running tally of your illogical responses.
My point still stands, doesn't it? The film makers lied and have credibility problems, regardless of what congress or the census bureau says.
Still, it's nice to see democrats so eager to investigate liberals. Maybe they'll get so used to it that they'll take a brief glance at the overflowing criminality of the Bush administration.
It's hilarious how minor conservative complaints about big government are. Acorn is number one?? They're a pebble on the shore. This takes me back to that earmark craze where fiscal conservatives yelled and yelled at 1% of the budget.
If government were really such a problem, conservatives would have bigger fish to fry. When private corporations screw up, it involves hundreds of billions of dollars and ruins millions of lives.
I'll start with the $200 billion a year in waste and fraud generated by Medicare. With or without healthcare reform I'm with Pres.Obama's pledge to cut out $500 billion in waste over the next 10 years...but he needs to double down and get all of it.
But they are the number 1 issue on many right-wingers radar.
And your $200 billion figure is off by about two orders of magnitude.
-- On top of that, according to well-respected Dartmouth researchers, roughly a third of Medicare's total $400 billion annual spending goes to procedures which were medically unnecessary. --
Now following your comment that Medicare is less wasteful than private insurers...we can crack down on them as well. That means that we can generate trillions of dollars over the next 10 years...that ought to be enough to enact some welcome health care reform.
The never ending quest for power and control by adversaries has become dreadful...and few are blameless. And I'll echo your "gawd help this country" if we can't stop this destructive behavior.
Until recently I was never a proponent of term limits for congress...but I'm firmly on that side now. We need to rid ourselves of career politicians...and then maybe...just maybe...we would see real leaders emerge, going to Washington to serve the country instead on entrenching themselves at the public trough for their our power and greed.
Six years should be enough for anyone to produce results...and then return to the private sector to live and work under the laws and regulations that they enacted.
I'm not so much of a Pollyanna to think that term limits will fix everything...but I really believe it's a good place to start to break the stranglehold of power/greed politics and activism.
But thanks for the smear of Obama coming from ignorance, Oscar. You rarely disappoint. You and Wesley make a great pair.
Peace.
First..you say:
And you follow that up..in your very next post....with this gem....
Liberals are always good for a laugh.
TODAY'S EDITION OF DUMBING IT DOWN FOR WINGNUTS THEATER
Let's pretend Oscar & Dell Dolly are married.
DD: I just joined a club store, and we can save $100 a month on groceries.
OTG: Good, I'm tired of you spending that $100 on drugs.
DD:I don't use drugs.GUess where that $100 is coming from .The lower grocery prices we'll be paying.
POV: Make up your mind, first you say you don't spend $100 drugs, then you say "guess where that $100 is coming from".
THE END.
"Investigators say that policing the vast health-care system is daunting. Civil settlements with large corporations such as Tenet Healthcare returned more than $900 million to the government last year. But tracking smaller schemes that together bleed the system of hundreds of millions of dollars is also a challenge."
That doesn't add up to $60 billion.
And the Dartmouth researchers were identifying endemic problems with health care as a whole, not something wrong or incompetent that the government is doing: "Americans tend to think more treatment equals better treatment, and are further seduced both by technology and, in many cases, the authority of the medical profession, despite evidence that much of that intervention is yielding little or no benefit."
It is misleading to call this "government waste". You know what image that evokes: big government is screwing up and can't do anything right. But this has nothing to do with government and everything to do with health care.
"Medicare is a successful government program with very little fraud, etc" -- that's not speculation. It's proven by comparing medicare costs with private insurance costs. Medicare is insuring the most challenging segment of the population, and it still has private insurance beat hands down. Its costs are rising and may soon become intolerable, but those same costs will rise faster and become more intolerable for private insurance.
"following your comment that Medicare is less wasteful than private insurers...we can crack down on them as well" -- not if you're conservative you can't. Your buddies won't let you. We have a global problem that is hitting private insurance hardest and government last. The conservative response is to demand to make government perfect first -- pretending all the while that government is the source of the problem -- and only then maybe lift a finger to deal with the wholesale looting going on in the private sector.
The whole world has this figured out already, and their solutions are government solutions.
Regardless of the many studies and reports that can be used to support either argument...how do you square the fact stated by Pres.Obama that there is $500 billion in waste and fraud...fact or fiction?
Much of the $500 Billion is money that is given to private insurance companies to manage and administer Medicare Advantage. If the govt runs it and doesn't have to make a profit, then we'll save that $500 Billion. Medicare recipients get the same coverage and the same care for a lower price than those on Medicare Advantage.
Private insurers made $3.3 Billion in profit in 2006 on Medicare Advantage alone.
There are also additional payments to hospitals right now that will be phased out, and money currently going to drug companies. Those concessions have already been agreed to with those two groups, because the hospitals will be in better shape financially if they aren't having to subsidize uninsured people's health care. More insured people means less unfunded care, which means they need less largesse from the federal govt.
It's not 'waste' in the way we normally think of waste. It's money that can be saved by providing services in a different way.
Nice to see the line so clear. Luckily we can settle this in two sentences.
With minor exceptions, every single country in the first world does good health care for less than 60% of our costs. They all do it with more government.
Notice how easy this debate would have been if the media had stated this fact clearly on day one, and pounded it every day after.
I don't favor more government because I love government. I favor more government because it's repeatedly proven to work.
A lot of people have video cameras,and a lot of businesses will sacrifice people even if they're not already the targets of concerted political attacks as ACORN are.
Be careful what you wish for.