ACORN, the real story.
 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/36204129#36204129

I hope ACORN sues the bejesus out of FOX, Hannity and beck and anyone else that aired it. For like Billions.

Weren't those Acorn videos just a joke? I always got the impression that two "activists" who did the videos of Acorn just wanted to get a laugh about how far over the line Acorn would go (pretty far), then the right jumped on it as if it was actual journalism, then the left jumped on it as a means of being included in the discussion, etc., etc., etc.

Bottom line; I never cared b/c it was all a bunch of hype built on a joke. Journalism today doesn't really exist, and it doesn't exist at Fox, CNN, MSNBC, in Beck, in Hannity, in Maddow, the AP, or anywhere else.

Please at least try BBC and NPR before you say that.

I think it would come down to intent. If the vids were made as a joke and that intent could be proven it would let the maker of the vids off the hook.

It the intent of the networks was to destroy ACORN through the use of the vids, and that could be proven, ......

Suing the guy who made the vid would be senseless since he has no deep pockets. Suing the networks could prove to be, well, a lesson to them in responsible journalism.

But sometimes it takes a lawsuit to get at the truth of a matter. Just look at how long it took Senator Al Franken to convince a court that he won an election? The truth came out despite the Republican's attempts to use the courts to change it.

I wonder how hard it would be for a lawyer to find 12 people that don't like Fox News?

"but it worked"

Using MSNBC as a source is worse than using Matt Drudge. I want journalism sans agenda.

I would go with BBC and the German news because the slander laws in germany would bankrupt anyone who didn't stick to what they could prove. France INTER is ok, and I don't listen to the Spanish or Italian ones.

How about Radio Havana and Radio Moscow:D:rolleyes: ?

BBC I like because they talk international news; NPR I can't listen to for two minutes without falling asleep (not to mention ALL the commentators are extremely left).

I suspect James O'Keefe, a guy who is not coming out looking too good in recent developments, saw it as his ticket into the big leagues. And it's not just Maddow who is pointing out the highly dishonest nature of those videos.

This frames my objection to FOX in a nutshell. They are so eager for ammo to spear the damned liberals that they jumped on this POS which is far more duplicitous than Rathergate IMO.

Are they going to take the same hit that Rather took? Are the US Reps (R) who held up O'Keefe as some valiant and worthy patriot going to come out and apologize to ACORN? Is Hannity going to showcase this story and state that he was wrong to glorify O'Keefe? I'm pretty good at holding my breath, but uhhh . . .

I'm guessing they will use the CA attorney generals investigation results to sue (if they decide to). Pretty sure that will carry a bit more weight.

I think the saddest part is that Vera had his name slandered for the sake of a buck, lost his job and who knows what else. For that O'Keef and Giles should see the inside of a cell for at least a few months.

I also hope this piece gets a ton of air time so that FOX can get a taste of their own medicine. They like to pretend that they are above it all but this proves they are as dirty as the rest.

Well then, FOX is what you want. :rolleyes:

MSNBC is head and shoulders above FOX in the veracity dept.

Maddow's video speaks for itself. FOX presented crap and agenda driven MSNBC caught them on it. (of course, you'd have to watch it to know)

"MSNBC is head and shoulders above FOX in the veracity dept."


OMG, I think I just threw up a bit in the back of my mouth after reading this...MSNBC is at least equally spavined as Fox, if not more. Neither is a straight news network:puke:

Thank You.

Thanks for sharing, you gentleman of refinement you. FOX is about 90% propo/fluff. Not even close.

Good Lord. Hannity and Palin both have opinion shows at FOX?!? And you're willing to trust their veracity??? This is a network that has sold it's soul and sold it cheap.

YES!! Hannity and Palin have OPINION shows, and are clearly labelled as such.

Most of the other news outlets stick the opinion in the "straight" news and never admits their bias.
The slant is obvious in the choice of stories--which get "hammered" and which get covered and quickly dropped, the choice of words, and the choice of pictures. You may have noticed that Drudge consistently posts unflattering pictures of Pelosi and Obama. I think that's his nudge at the way the other media news outlets choose unflatering pictures of people they want to skewer.

Please. O'Reilly has an "opinion" show as well but he touts it as a "No Spin Zone". He wants people to think he is giving you unbiased news, not his opinion. Hannity, Palin and the rest have all used the quote "Fair and Balanced" at one time or another trying to give the impression that their bias is not reflected in the news they are presenting.

Please do not try and pass off FOX as being any better than the rest of them. FOX is just as full of BS as MSNBC or any of the others.

Also, do you honestly think that O'Keefe went to FOX with is crap attack piece just out of blind luck? He went to FOX because he knew they were a conservative station who was looking for anything against Obama or anything to do with him. He knew that FOX would not give it too much scrutiny and it would get air time. Same reason why Moore pedals his stuff at liberal stations.

EXACTLY my point.

I was responding to txjake who indicated that MSNBC was "head and shoulders above Fox". I agree with you--they are the same.
Any "agenda journalism" is only propagande, and no longer truly juornalism; it matters not whether the propaganda skews left or right.

Of course, any study in US history will quickly confirm that there never was a time when we had ture journalism. There were newspapers that reported everything favorable for Lincoln, and others everything unfavorable. If you didn't look at the dates of when the articles were written, you would never guess that they covered the same event.

Media companies are in the business of making money. Easiest way to do that in "journalism" is to mud rake. Murdoch gives money to democrats, dont think that FOX is the conservative mouth piece that is because of some nobler cause.

I think this article sums things up nicely:


Better run, run, run away: O'Reilly Factor ambushes Al Gore
Smarmy Fox News guy starts a conversation, but can't even finish it
BY GABRIEL WINANT


There's been some talk online lately among critics of conservative orthodoxy about a phenomenon on the right they're calling "epistemic closure." Basically, the idea is that modern conservatives have, intellectually speaking, holed themselves up behind a firewall. Blogger Julian Sanchez puts it like this:

Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with that reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media, and is therefore ipso facto not to be trusted. (How do you know they’re liberal? Well, they disagree with the conservative media!)

The finer points of how this phenomenon works are up for debate. What's pretty clear, though, is that this basic principle operates even among the self-styled saner voices of mainstream conservatism. I can't believe I'm following that last sentence with this one, but, Fox News' would-be straight man Bill O'Reilly gave us a neat little example yesterday of how epistemic closure works.

O'Reilly, as Salon has pointed out before, is fond of the ambush interview. It's an unfair gimmick to begin with, and the O'Reilly Factor has always relied on that inherent unbalanced quality to produce some incredibly misleading and exploitative footage. Yesterday, the Factor showed footage of its ambush specialist, the impossibly smug producer Jesse Watters, badgering Al Gore before a lecture at Duke University. (Video is at bottom.)

According to O'Reilly, the show has been trying for 11 years to land an interview with Gore. So when Watters catches up with him, he asks, "Why won't you come on the O'Reilly Factor, Mr. Vice President? You know Bill's not a big anti-global warming guy." Gore at first tries to brush off his attacker, saying, "I don't like ambush journalism." But this is Watters' job. Gore is trying to lecture a mugger -- not the best strategy.

Then Gore does a head fake and says, obviously not meaning it, that he'll consider coming on the show. It's an understandable dodge, but a mistake, because Watters interprets that to mean that a formal interview has commenced. "While we have you here, what’s your reaction to the fact that the arctic ice is actually increasing"

Gore tries to back out -- "You don't have me here, I'm not doing an interview" -- but it's too late. As the former vice president escapes to lunch, Watters peppers him with loaded questions. "What's your reaction to the fact that the arctic ice is actually increasing?" "One last question for you: are you embarrassed at all about ClimateGate, sir?" "Do you stand to make any money from cap-and-trade?"

This resembles a genuine interview conducted by a genuine journalist only insofar as someone is being paid by an information medium to direct questions at a political figure. Mainly, it's a master class in smarminess. The whole thing is staged so that Watters is shouting embarrassing-seeming questions at a fleeing Gore, who will obviously not engage with them.

The charges, of course, are spurious. Arctic ice increases every winter, because winters are, naturally, colder than summers. But there's still a trend of long-term decrease. "ClimateGate" is a wholly overblown kerfluffle, and it requires strenuous, willful misinterpretation to think that it disproves climate change. And as for cap-and-trade, the purpose is to use financial incentives to encourage people to get in on the ground floor of clean energy technologies. Gore, presumably solidly on that bandwagon, wouldn't be exploiting some loophole to illicitly line his pockets. It’s the whole point -- the free market approach to preventing environmental disaster.

O’Reilly, ostensibly "not a big anti-global warming guy," smirks at the camera after the segment, and asks, "Does he have a responsibility to answer those questions?" And then the guy has the nerve to wonder why Gore won’t come on the program.

Actually, he of course isn’t really wondering that. Watters' ambush journalism is structured to make it seem like there’s a conspiracy of liberals who won't engage with the important questions. By being outrageously provocative and misleading, it discourages its targets from engaging with it, and thus is able to make unanswered insinuations about them. It is, in other words, epistemic closure at its finest: questions that don't need answers, and an argument that has no interest in a response.

JollyR
That would have summed it up nicely IF it had also included a similar report of a similar tactic used unfairly by one the the "other" media sources. Presented as it was, it tries to give the impression that all the error is only on the Fox side, and that the "other" side never engages in such suspicious tactics.

Simply put, I don't think liberals live in the kind of controlled echo chamber that conservatives do. You guys are working is some strange world of controlled ignorance, just ask your local Death Panel.

Al Gore is a crook and an idiot......

^ see what I mean ? Please provide evidence Gore is a "crook". Given his achievements in life, anyone can see the man is not an idiot.

If he actually believes in MMGW, he is an idiot. If he doesn't and is trying to scam the world by implementing "carbon taxes" and all that other bunk, then he is a crook. Methinks he is a bit of both....don't just take my word; Bubba Clinton didn't like him either....;)

So, thousands of top scientists are idiots......

See, you got to believe what is essentially a load of crap to be a right winger.

essentially:

1: yes, or liars

2: don't know, I am not a right winger, but from you, I'd take that as a complement