http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/09/14/dan-gainor-acorn-media-ignore/
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.
But it isn’t working any more. The ACORN fiasco has now impacted three offices – Baltimore, Washington and New York – with laugh-out-loud videos reminiscent of the hookers and pimps from the 1970s “Starsky and Hutch” show. Huggy Bear returns! Four employees have been fired, with more likely to come. And the controversy was so laughably bad that the Census Bureau cut off all ties to the group known formally as the "Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now." -- They called it the “tipping point” to shed themselves of ACORN. More nuts for someone else, I guess.
And yet. And yet it’s still been ignored by the network news. Nothing on ABC, CBS or NBC. The only thing any one of the three broadcast networks has done appeared in a blog post by ABC’s Jake Tapper. It's hardly worth noting except to show that the networks know about what’s going on. They just don’t care to report it. Only FOX News has bothered to report on the controversy.
That pretty much confirms what we’ve known for a while… the media ignores stories that disagree with their political mindset. And what excuse do they give? One of the biggest political scandals this year and they claim they didn’t know about it.
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/09/15/acorn-watch-charlie-gibson-and-the-ostrich-media/
While listening to Don Wade and Roma this morning on WLS AM Chicago, they had [ABC News Anchor] Charlie Gibson on as their usual Tuesday morning guest. Don asked Charlie, why, after the senate last night voted to halt funding to ACORN and after three of those video tapes of ACORN employees helping the pimp and prostitute set up shop, there was no mention of it anywhere on the network news. Charlie gave out a most uncomfortable laugh and said that that was the first he heard of it!
That’s a popular tactic, just say you didn’t know about it. It’s what White House spokesman Gibbs did in reference to the 9-12 March on DC… the morning of the event he said he didn’t know anything about it.
Okay, anybody who believes that, raise your hands.
UPDATE: The Acorn videos may well be, according to this newscaster, entrapment.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein/2009/09/15/norah-odonnell-acorn-video-might-be-viewed-entrapment
Politico.com goes with the "conservatives who cried wolf" explanation...
ReplyDelete"The dearth -- and tardiness -- of coverage by the traditional media is explained in part by the fact that most reporters for establishment news organizations do not follow the conservative media. They tend to consider many of the more outlandish charges from the right to be plain loony -- which they often are.
And ACORN has long been an obsession of the right, with some of past criticism taking on racial overtones. So reporters, being used to tuning out charges against ACORN, were slow to realize that this was a time when the group’s opponents had the goods."