The American Spectator

The Spectacle Blog

Here's the Saturday morning round-up on the Census Bureau story for the formerly mainstream media, checking out their home Web pages:

Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today, CBS News, CNN Sucks -- story isn't there. WashPost did run a piece about the Big Government expose' in DC.

MSNBC, to its credit, posted a link to an AP version of the story near the top of their homepage. Some of the others above have the AP story too, but they don't headline it on their homepages. This is significant because all the major news organizations have an auto-feed of wire service stories to their sites -- MSNBC just took the trouble to link it from their homepage.

Fox News of course has followed the story all along, and the Washington Times ran the AP version.

And kudos to ABC News (top of their homepage) and reporter Jake Tapper. Unlike the other lazy and indifferent bureaus listed above, Tapper stayed on the story doing original reporting, crediting Fox News and Big Government for their scoops, embedded one of James O'Keefe's YouTube videos in his story, and got a response that no one else did:

Census Bureau spokesman Stephen Buckner said officials in the bureau, which is part of the Department of Commerce, had been concerned with news reports about ACORN for awhile and “had been monitoring them.”

Buckner said recent videotapes posted on BigGovernment.com and broadcast on Fox News -- showing a young man and young woman pretending to be a pimp and prostitute, declaring themselves such and apparently able to secure the help of ACORN employees in Washington D.C. , and Baltimore, in obtaining housing – was “the tipping point.”

It was “cumulative,” Buckner said, “but certainly the recent activity didn’t help.”

So clearly O'Keefe and Hannah Giles (who portrayed the prostitute in the video) are to be highly praised for exposing the extreme depths of criminality that ACORN accepts and spurring action by an extremely important government agency. That most of the traditional news organizations are ignoring the fact that this group, vital to the election of President Obama, was exposed as a child sex trafficking facilitator and then cut loose by the Census illustrates how morally bankrupt many in the formerly mainstream media are.

Finally, to follow up on my post yesterday about this, I addressed the allegation that ACORN made about O'Keefe and Giles (or some others attempting to "smear" the group) testing offices in Philadelphia, Los Angeles and New York. O'Keefe yesterday denied that he had any part in other efforts:

So far CNN has only reported on the breaking story on blatant ACORN CORRUPTION from angles that attempt to extricate the government funded “community organizing”  enterprise from the extreme crime we caught on videotape.

First CNN pushed the false ACORN line that “[t]his film crew tried to pull this sham at other offices and failed.”

To set that record straight please check the Washington D.C. tape we dropped today at BigGovernment.com, which is also being aired on your cable news competitor with curiously higher ratings.

Now that ACORN lied to you, Jonathan Klein (CNN's president), what are you going to do?

Also yesterday, ACORN housing president Alton Bennett and executive director Mike Shea released a statement, which said in part:

“This video tape is slanted to misinform the public about ACORN Housing. The people who made this tape went to at least five other ACORN Housing offices where they were turned away or where ACORN Housing employees responded by calling the police. That is not mentioned on the tape – it is part of a long-term plan to smear ACORN Housing for political reasons and provide entertainment in the process.

Considering my instincts to trust more what I see with my eyes rather than what child trafficking voter fraud perpetrators tell me, I request that ACORN provide copies of police reports and eyewitnesses. If you've got it on video, even better.

topics:
ACORN