Breitbart Sets Trap, ACORN, Agenda Media Get Caught
When the incriminating ACORN videos started coming out, ACORN wasn’t the only corrupt organization that Andrew Breitbart was expecting to catch. According to this post, the other corrupt organization he was expecting to expose was the Agenda Media:
When filmmaker and provocateur James O’Keefe came to my office to show me the video of him and his friend, Hannah Giles, going to the Baltimore offices of ACORN, the nation’s foremost “community organizers”, dressed as a pimp and a prostitute and asking for, and getting, help for various illegal activities, he sought my advice. In the past, Mr. O’Keefe created brilliant social satire that rocked his college campus and even made its way on to the talk-radio and cable-news shows, but the magnitude of his latest adventure had the potential to rock the political establishment.
I was awed by Mr. O’Keefe’s guts and amazed by the footage, but explained that the mainstream media would try to kill this important and illuminating expose about a corrupt and criminal political racket, and that the well-funded political left would go into “war room” mode, with 25-year-old Mr. O’Keefe and 20-year-old cohort Miss Giles in the cross hairs. I felt I had a moral obligation to protect these young muckrakers from the left and from the media, and to devise a strategy that would force the media’s hand.
This post dovetails nicely with Mr. Breitbart’s recent interview with Megyn Kelly:
KELLY: You were with us the morning that the story broke — the morning that the first video aired on BigGovernment.com. And now in a week’s time, the congressional action, the response by the Feds, has been really stunning. I mean, for years, the Democrats in Congress have not wanted to sign on to anything that would cut back funding from ACORN, and now we see these huge majorities coming out of the Senate and the House to cut down the group — to cut off the group’s funding. What’s your reaction, a week into this?
BREITBART: Well, I’m grateful that the American public has realized that there’s a serious problem here, and that their elected representatives are taking their concerns seriously. A new Rasmussen poll came out this morning that says America’s overwhelmingly disturbed by what they’ve seen on these videos.
But, predictably, and why we rolled the videos out one by one by one by one, we set traps for ACORN to lie; each and every time they lied. They went to the mainstream media, continued to tell those lies. The next day, the previous day’s lies were exposed. And CNN in particular has kept going back to ACORN and taking their line.
The behavior of Jonathan Klein, the president of CNN, has been despicable during this. They continue to impugn [filmmakers] James [O'Keefe] and Hannah [Giles], and they are continuing to tell falsehoods, that they were kicked out of ACORN offices. And that’s the current line that some at ACORN, including Bertha Lewis, continue to push. There are more videos to come, and some, and in towns that they continue to say that they were kicked out of.
Though I won’t argue that the Agenda Media is as corrupt as ACORN, I will argue that their behavior in this has been utterly disgusting. Why didn’t CBS, NBC or CNN check the accuracy of ACORN’s statements, especially after ACORN’s first day’s statements were discredited? I don’t think it’s because they’re that lazy. I think it’s that they’re willing accomplices in protecting President Obama and congressional Democrats.
Until now, the TEA party movement has been about exposing corrupt politicians and about telling career politicians that there’s a paradigm shift that’s happening. It’s apparent that the time is now to start a companion movement to start a paradigm shift that cleans up the Agenda Media. We The People need accurate and complete information to consistently make good decisions. We aren’t getting that right now except if we’re getting it from citizen journalists like James O’Keeefe, Hannah Giles and Andrew Breitbart.
KELLY: It’s not, I mean, Bertha Lewis is the person behind that charge. She’s the CEO of ACORN, they call her the chief organizer, but, essentially, that’s the CEO. And she’s been all over the map on responding to this, Andrew. First she came out and said, you know, this is defamatory. They threatened lawsuits against James and Hannah, against you, against Fox, for anybody who would touch the story is going to get sued for touching the story. Then they came out and said, oh, they tried this stunt at a bunch of offices and failed. Then tape after tape we kept seeing that, well, actually, they tried it at a bunch of offices and succeeded at a bunch of offices as well. Are there more tapes to come?
BREITBART: Oh, absolutely. And I’ve, they, CNN in particular, I have spoken to their producers, who have been impugning the motivations of Hannah and James and trying to find aspects of their story that are false, when ACORN has been false. I have said to them James and Hannah will appear on your network, even for a hit job, if you show the American people, or the small segment of their audience that still goes to that network, if you show them those tapes and let them decide, just like Congress did, just like Al Franken did, he voted against it.
The bottom line is that the Agenda Media assisted ACORN is hiding ACORN’s corruption. CNN didn’t independently verify the voracity of ACORN’s statements. Instead of checking with outside sources, it appears that CNN asked ACORN whether the tapes were accurate. When ACORN whined about the videos being a hit job, it appears as though CNN simply accepted ACORN’s statement at face value.
QUESTION: Did anyone think that ACORN’s statement might be inaccurate? Did CNN think that ACORN might benefit from lying about the videos?
Technorati Tags: ACORN, CNN, Corruption, Citizen Journalists, Janes O’Keefe, Hannah Giles, Reporting, Investigation, TEA Party, Andrew Breitbart
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog