The New York Times “was duped” and “refuses to own up to mistakes in the paper’s coverage” of the now-infamous ACORN “pimp” hoax video tapes published by partisan Rightwing activists James O’Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Andrew Breitbart.
That coverage, according to a devastating, no-holds barred, well-documented action alert issued today by the decades-old media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), was “wildly misleading” as a result of the paper having “decide[d] to skip the standard rules of journalism.”
FAIR has been covering bias in the media since 1986 and today’s detailed action alert calls on the “paper of record” to issue retractions, apologies, and explanations for their repeatedly incorrect and uncritical coverage of the Rightwing ACORN “pimp” hoax videos.
The group also excoriates New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt’s often-absurd emailed justifications to The BRAD BLOG for refusing to recommend the paper issue retractions and apologies, as they decry: “It is hard to believe that Hoyt actually believes what he’s saying here.”
Finally, FAIR’s analysis of the reportage, videos, and transcripts comes to the damning conclusion: “The videos were in fact a hoax, and the Times was duped. Its readers deserve to know as much–and ACORN, which suffered serious political damage as a result of the false stories, deserves an apology.”
They ask readers, as we have for many weeks, to contact the Times’ Public Editor Hoyt to “recommend that the paper investigate the ACORN videos and produce a report that clarifies the record”…
Please read the entire FAIR piece, and take the action they recommend there to demand accountability from the New York Times, but here are a few devastating money quotes from FAIR’s coverage today:
…
[T]he story the Times continues to tell is wildly misleading, as a review of the publicly available transcripts of his visit (BigGovernment.com) makes clear. O’Keefe never dressed as a pimp during his visits to ACORN offices, seems to never actually represent himself as a “pimp,” and the advice he solicits is usually about how to file income taxes (which is not “tax evasion”). In at least one encounter (at a Baltimore ACORN office), the pair seemed to first insist that Giles was a dancer, not a prostitute.
In the case recounted in the March 2 Times story, the transcripts show that O’Keefe did not portray himself as a pimp to the ACORN workers in Brooklyn, but told them that he was trying to help his prostitute girlfriend. In part of the exchange, O’Keefe and his accomplice seem to be telling ACORN staffers that they are attempting to buy a house to protect child prostitutes from an abusive pimp.
Throughout the months the Times covered the story, it made a major mistake: believing that Internet videos produced by right-wing activists were to be trusted uncritically, rather than approached with the skepticism due to anything you’d come across on the Web. O’Keefe and the Web publisher Andrew Breitbart refused to make unedited copies of the videotape public, and with good reason: A more complete viewing, as the transcripts show, would produce a much different impression.
…
The videos were in fact a hoax, and the Times was duped. Its readers deserve to know as much–and ACORN, which suffered serious political damage as a result of the false stories, deserves an apology.
FAIR concludes with an ACTION item, including Hoyt’s email address and phone number (Public@NYTimes.com, 212-556-7652) urging readers to: “Encourage New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt to recommend that the paper investigate the ACORN videos and produce a report that clarifies the record.”
Earlier this month, ACORN launched its own campaign to “demand accountability” from the NYTimes and other media outlets that have similarly misreported the story, following The BRAD BLOG’s weeks-long exposé of the hoax.
As noted in FAIR’s action alert, the former MA Attorney General Scott Harshbarger found [PDF] last December, in an independent report which was highly critical of the group for organizational failures, that there were no illegalities or pattern of criminality by ACORN or its employees seen on the well-publicized, highly-edited, heavily-overdubbed, secretly-taped videos released last year, though Harshbarger did note that O’Keefe and Giles may have broken the law by secretly video taping the low-level ACORN and ACORN Housing employees.
The BRAD BLOG detailed a number of Harshbarger’s overlooked findings in an essay yesterday and we also recently highlighted how one of the most apparently-stunning moments on the video tapes was, in reality, not at all what it was presented to be by the rightwing hoaxsters when compared to their own unauthenticated text transcripts.
Last week, in another setback for the GOP’s anti-ACORN agenda, Kings County, NY, District Attorney Charles J. Hynes found “no criminality” in the videos taken at the Brooklyn ACORN offices as he announced the end of his five-month probe. Officials from his office decried the videos as “‘highly edited’ splice jobs” and declared “they edited the tape to meet their agenda.”
Yesterday, a federal judge determined that Congress passed — and President Obama signed — an unconstitutional bill of attainder, when they attempted to withhold federal funding from the community organization last fall as the scam video tapes were presented (and mis-represented, over and over and over and over again) to the public.
In her finding, granting permanent injunctive relief to ACORN, U.S. District Court Judge Nina Gershon also slammed Congressional lawmakers for having rammed through the unconstitutional defunding measure without trial or even the minimal due process of holding a single hearing at which ACORN might have been able to present much of what the public has only recently learned about the hoax tapes — even as the New York Times still refuses to report on that hoax.
To date, in addition to the NYTimes, none of the media outlets whose repeated and inaccurate misreporting that we’ve highlighted to date — including the Baltimore Sun, CNN, New York Post, Washington City Paper, Washington Times, Philadelphia Daily News, NPR, and Dallas Morning News — have issued corrections, retractions, or apologies for that coverage to our knowledge.
Read, and take action on, the FAIR report here…
Brad, hope you don’t mind my throwing in my update to “Breaking: Another ACORN Court Victory; Federal Judge Strikes Down Funding Ban as Unconstitutional” here for those who may have missed it.
Clark Hoyt walked into a deli and engaged in intercourse.
No correction or apology to Hoyt will be forthcoming as I, using Hoyt’s logic, did not claim the two events happened at the same time.
That type of extreme and faulty logic betrays a bias against accurately reporting the ACORN story and Hoyt has certainly sacrificed his credibility on, at least, this issue if not completely in his role as ombudsman.
What’s wrong with talking in a deli? Bad example.
Yesterday, as I was driving home I turned on NPR and they were explaining about the case where a judge upheld the decision that made the Congressional action of singling out ACORN for defunding was unconstitutional. In the description of the situation leading up to the judges decision they referred to O’Keefe, Giles and Breitbart and the media storm that ensued from their “interview” with ACORN employees. Nowhere in the short report did they mention the fact that these videos were highly edited, nor the recent decision by the DAs found that the video was highly edited and there was no case against ACORN or any employees. They did find time to mention that the justice department could still appeal this decision.
Way to go NPR, there goes another media outlet that is not doing its job.
The NYT should not apologize. They should pay ACORN an equivalent amount of money that ACORN was denied due to the NYT fostering the illegal Congressional act of attainder.
Clark Hoyt engaged in intercourse and walked into a deli.
Clark Hoyt took off all his clothes and walked into the New York Times offices yesterday. I’m really suprised he wasn’t fired.
(Assuming, of course, that he showers daily and does it without clothes).
Congratulations on the progress you’ve made on this issue, Brad. It looks like David will eventually bring Goliath to his knees.
Looking in from outside, I try to imagine how you feel about this ludicrous drama, which seems to have started with your willingness to follow up on a reader’s perfectly reasonable email. I wonder if the Times’ recalcitrance came as a surprise to you, or if you’d already known how pathetic the Times’ internal correctives were.
Well well it only took me about 4 postings over at Patrick’s site to be put into moderation for supposed slander. All because I said I thought someone in his role would act more professionally in their personal life. It was in regards to him being put into moderation here for his personal attacks. When he tried to play it off as him being put into moderation for stating what he said was the truth. I wasn’t even debating him on the issues either.
Haha already with the ban threats by Patrick
I object to the claim that the NYT was “duped.” One cannot be duped when one willingly joins in a conspiracy to slander a fine organization such as ACORN. There is no other explanation. The NYT has a specific agenda, which is all-out war on what little democracy we once enjoyed in the U$A. The NYT is a big business, and we all know what that means when it comes to truth, justice, and the ‘murkan way. What a pathetic excuse for a society, when everything, and I mean everything, is valued strictly according to dollar worth.
Meanwhile, if you need a good cry, check out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=vOhf3OvRXKg
Mitch @ 9 asked:
In truth — perhaps because I have the not-necessarily-helpful habit of giving everyone the benefit of the doubt and not assuming nefariousness until all other options are gone — I was, and continue to be rather stunned by the entire affair.
I believe I described it early on as being “gobsmacked”. That feeling continues.
When Sr. Editor for Standards(!) Greg Brock described their source as Fox “News” and O’Keefe himself, I thought surely he was just being sloppy, lazy, using shorthand. When he then went on, even after being called out on it, to seemingly make stuff up outta whole clothe, it became certainly more troubling.
But when Public Editor Clark Hoyt jumped in, a man for whom I’d had some respect previously as a disinterested, honest party, but then, beyond all reason he continued to support what was clearly an untenable position, I became beyond-gobsmacked, but I don’t know a word for it. 🙂
I knew the NYT had serious internal failings. But I’d presumed they were largely based on laziness, lack of resources for a very big and important job, and the human failings we all have. I would never have predicted that the NYT would go so far out of their way to NOT simply do the right thing, when doing so would have been so incredibly simple, and appropriate, for them to do.
To this day, I still try not to ascribe reasons for their now-obvious and monumental continuing failure, since I’d simply be speculating, and I don’t do that here. But I’ll tell ya, it’s getting damned difficult not to see the entire matter as nefarious, as so many have suggested to me for quite some time.
I don’t know that it’s nefariousness (see the above about my proclivity to give benefit of the doubt), but I’m being to run out of non-nefarious reasons to explain their continuing and seemingly self-defeating failures here.
In short: No, I’d have never thought they’d have worked this hard to NOT do the right thing. I was, apparently, very wrong about that.
Don’t have time to give this a listen right now, but Amy Goodman is covering recent ACORN developments / has on John Atlas, Pres. of ACORN HOUSING:
http://www.democracynow.org/
(Way to go, Brad!)
Seriously Brad, after the last 15+ years of crap coming out of “The Paper of Record” (starting most prominently with Lewinsky, the coverage of the 2000 election, and Iraq war cheerleading, and what have they done wrt election fraud / voting machines) and their failure to own up to any of their “mistakes” and set the record straight on any of those failings you’re really surprised that they wouldn’t feel the need to retract the ACORN “reporting” that they’ve done…
this is just one more “story” in the narrative that they’ve been pushing and you’re seriously shitting in their cornflakes.
keep it up!
Judge Instructs Fed Agencies to Resume ACORN Funding
Acornweb
A federal judge has reaffirmed her earlier ruling blocking the congressional effort to defund the anti-poverty group ACORN. On Wednesday, Judge Nina Gershon cemented a decision from last year that such action amounted to an unconstitutional “bill of attainder.†Judge Gershon has asked all federal agencies to allow ACORN funding without delay. We speak with National Housing Institute president John Atlas, author of Seeds of Change: The Story of ACORN, America’s Most Controversial Anti-Poverty Community Group.
http://www.democracynow.org/201...cies_to_resume
JOHN ATLAS: I’m going to talk about that in a minute, but the first thing I want to say, that needs to be said over and over again, is that the act of defunding ACORN by Congress is a national disgrace. We should all be outraged about that. Basically what happened is Congress bowed to Fox News, Glenn Beck, the rest of the right-wing echo chamber—we’re talking about the United States Congress—and then scapegoated the most effective anti-poverty organization in the country. That’s a scandal of enormous proportions.
ACORN has a record of helping poor people in these hard times. They help them get homes. They help them stop foreclosures. They help them fight predatory lending. They help them register voters. I’m talking about minority voters, people who ordinarily don’t vote. Very hard to get that kind of voter registration work done. And in short, all other studies, including mine, have documented how effective ACORN has been and how important it’s been to low-income people, especially the working poor.
OK, now, with the significance of the decision, first people have to understand the context. This was a case in which the Congress defunded ACORN, and they claimed they had to defund ACORN to protect the taxpayers. ACORN brought a lawsuit. They brought it against the United States government, the Office of Management and Budget, the Secretary of HUD, and the Secretary of Treasury. They had to bring a lawsuit against them because these were the people who issued orders, pursuant to the vote by Congress, to not allow ACORN to get any funding that it was entitled to, but didn’t get, and they could not, in the future, apply for federal funding.
Whoops! Jeannie posted that, I missed it! Sorry!
Good grief…let me get this straight. You believe ACORN is a good thing?
The truth is that ACORN *is* a good thing. The narrative that some people are trying to sell you is that ACORN is a nefarious, evil entity, committing crimes all over the place, and cheating in elections. There is no real evidence of any of these negative accusations about ACORN, only manufactured evidence. Despite a ridiculous number of investigations, no wrong doing has been found of ACORN, and very few of it’s employees have been found guilty of wrongdoing (most of the ones they did find were turned in by ACORN itself.) However, there is another reason for people to hate ACORN: they register poor, democratic-leaning individuals to vote. This is not in the best interest of the republicans, hence all of this manufactured evidence of wrongdoing, and misinformation being spread all over about them. Oh wait, what was I thinking? Republicans don’t do shit like that. Nevermind, ACORN must be guilty after all. Otherwise… Well that would mean… Republicans will do anything to win… Which is a slippery slope…
COMMENT #19 [Permalink]
… Chuck said on 3/12/2010 @ 1:01 pm PT…
Good grief…let me get this straight. You believe ACORN is a good thing?
Yes. I think organizations for the poor are a good thing. You don’t?
I sent an e-mail to FAIR in which I recommended your excellent reporting about the NYT/Hoyt anti-ACORN propaganda and asked them if they would be interested in the issue. They never replied but several days later they posted this action alert.
@Chris Hooten and Big Dan I believe it is every person’s duty to help the poor. When I first heard all the hoopla about ACORN I checked their history. I was saddened to discover that this organization failed in its mission. Somewhere along the line, a few of its leaders let greed and power destroy a potentially great organization. Your comments, along with this blog have prompted me to dig some more. I hope I will discover something redeeming about ACORN. I will keep an open mind.
As a small business man I’ve had some experience trying to have my voice heard so I could help enact change I believed would help other “small fry” like me. I was given a platform then shown the door. I’ve been kicked around and almost crushed by the federal government and large corporate entities who don’t care one bit about an average working stiff like me. I have learned that those with the money make and benefit from the laws. Our reps on Capitol Hill might listen to the hoi poloi but will always support legislation driven by large corporations willing to pad the pols’ reelection campaigns.
So I respect any group that can organize and help make good things happen for the poor and other forgotten folks. ACORN has done much good but they have made many mistakes. I hope they can get their act together and give voice to the millions who have no real representation in Washington.
Clark Hoyt, Public Editor:
New York Times
Sir:
I have been following this story since it first broke on national television and in the newspapers. I also have been following the story as it unraveled as a deliberately fabricated hoax meant to smear a public interest organization.
In the last few years the New York Times has had to admit on more than one occasion that it had published false or misleading information. In the past it has been quick to rectify the situation to maintain credibility. That is not the case involving this false story.
A groundswell of public indignation is gathering strength in calling for the retraction and correction of the reporting of this story by the NYT. What is difficult to understand is the Editor who is supposed to be the advocate for the public, instead becomes the apologist for the misleading story. The very same sentence you used in your column in September should have been written differently, and you need to do so immediately:
“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.”
“Some stories, upon further investigation, never should catch fire because of the journalistic integrity of news organizations reveals them for what they are, hoaxes. This time the Times was not alert, did not exercise due diligence, nor quickly retract when it became obvious the story was a hoax, instead it wound up looking clueless, and worse, partisan itself.”
How many times must the Times continue to fail to adhere to basic journalistic integrity before it will lost all credibility to the American people. Trust not only must be earned, it must continue to be proven by standing up to scrutiny. In this instance, that trust was and continues to be betrayed.
Regards,
Joseph Holder
California