NYTIMES RUNS INACCURATE 'CORRECTION' FOR ACORN 'PIMP' HOAX COVERAGE

[BradBlog]

Source: BRAD BLOG



NYTIMES RUNS INACCURATE 'CORRECTION' FOR ACORN 'PIMP' HOAX COVERAGE - IT'S PATHETIC
In addition to being wrong, no apology nor explanation offered
Errors already repeated in separate story for tomorrow's paper...

The once-great New York Times has now become the new shame of this nation. Tonight they have run a "correction" concerning their repeated misreporting of the ACORN "Pimp" Hoax for tomorrow's papers. And, as you'll see below, it's pathetic --- simply pathetic --- and still inaccurate.

Among other things, they they repeat the falsehood that James O'Keefe "posed as a pimp" in ACORN offices. He didn't. He posed as the fake prostitutes law school boyfriend trying to help save her from a pimp who had stalked and threatened to kill her, as a review of even O'Keefe's own unauthenticated text-transcripts show.

At the same time, no apology has been issued, no explanation has been offered for the original and still-repeated errors, and no explanation is given for how such easily-avoided misreporting will be avoided in the future.

Here is the absolutely shameful squib published tonight on the web, and running in tomorrow's paper, along with just the shortest explanation of how they are still getting it completely wrong, but don't seem to care, because they've repeated the inaccurate reporting in a separate story also in tomorrow's paper…

FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7759

Read more: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7759

---

…CONTACT…
Executive Editor Bill Keller, [e-mail]
Managing Editor John Geddes, [e-mail]
Sr. Editor for Standards Greg Brock, [e-mail]
Public Editor Clark Hoyt, [e-mail]
Reporter Ian Urbina, [e-mail]

[Iowa]

1. K&R

[truthisfreedom]

2. Wow. We live in a bizarro world now.

What passes for reporting is just insane. We're totally being manipulated.

[BradBlog]

3. Yes we are...

"totally being manipulated".

So let's stop falling for it, and demand ACCOUNTABILITY from these people! I've given you the email addresses above. PLEASE use them! The wingnuts would. And in spades! (And that's why they get action!)

[EFerrari]

4. How can this possibly not be by design.

Are we supposed to believe they're merely stupid and incompetent?

Disgusting.

[glitch]

25. Incompetence is not plausible.

They've run that excuse into the ground.

[annabanana]

5. Funny how the primary documents on this story are easily

"checkable" and yet the most famous paper in the world can't seem to find them.

[The Wielding Truth]

38. An Independent Governance Assessment of ACORN

http://www.proskauer.com/files/uploads/report2.pdf

Check for the interviews summaries of Ms. Giles and O' Keefe's visits at the end of the report. It really looks like entrapment.

The unedited videos have never been made public. The videos that have been released
appear to have been edited, in some cases substantially, including the insertion of a substitute
12
voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O’Keefe’s and Ms.Giles’s comments, which makes it
difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding. A comparison
of the publicly available transcripts2 to the released videos confirms that large portions of the
original video have been omitted from the released versions. To date, the videographers have
declined or ignored our interview requests.
We have described what we have been told were the specific circumstances of each visit
in narratives attached hereto as Appendix D, which stem from interviews of ACORN employees,
many of whom did not have direct knowledge of the events but who spoke with the individuals
captured on video, or with employees who had been approached by the videographers. We did
not interview the employees captured on video, since we were satisfied there was no question
that the visits occurred and the comments were made. In addition, we could not offer them – or
our notes – confidentiality or privileged communication status. Hence, all our knowledge about
the videos is largely circumstantial and secondhand. It is important to note that none of the
ACORN offices visited has any written record of the visits, nor did ACORN know that it was a
systematic campaign until the videos aired.
Based on our investigation, we offer the following comments:
1. Three of the six videos – Brooklyn, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. –
involved only ACORN Housing employees, over which ACORN has no
control.
2. The released videos offer no evidence of a pattern of illegal conduct by
ACORN employees. In fact, out of the three videos involving ACORN
employees, at least two involve extenuating circumstances.
2 For purposes of comparing the video transcripts to the released videos, note that the videographers have posted
what they allege are the complete transcripts at www.biggovernment.com.
13
3. The ACORN employees captured on video were members or part-time staff.
They were not organizers or supervisory level employees.
4. None of the individuals captured on video consented to being video- or audiotaped,
and four of the states where the videos were recorded appear to prohibit
such taping without consent.
5. In offices where the videographers spoke with organizers, videos were not
released.
6. Police reports regarding the video incidents were filed in Philadelphia and San
Diego.
7. The released videos were edited or manipulated by the videographers and/or
individual(s) acting on their behalf.
8. There is no evidence that any action, illegal or otherwise, was taken by
ACORN employees on behalf of the videographers.
9. Experienced forensic investigators would be able to determine the extent to
which the released videos have been manipulated to distort, rather than merely
shape, the facts and the conversations, as ACORN alleges.
Viewed from the perspective of managerial oversight, the videos stand as a symbol of
ACORN’s organizational and supervisory weakness. The disparate ways in which ACORN staff
handled the videographers’ visits highlight the organization’s failure to deploy best practices at
the grassroots level to ensure proper screening and intake processes, supervision and training. In
addition, ACORN itself failed to adequately investigate the totality of the circumstances of the
visits prior to taking action against its own employees and, hence, was in no position to defend
itself.

[SpiralHawk]

6. The Times has jumped the shark

Ptooey.

[Guilded Lilly]

21. Half the entire country has jumped the shark :(

This is fast becoming a world without any dignity, grace or conscience.
It is beyond sad.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

7. Why would they do this? Is Accorn that scary? Are they afraid the of Tea Party People?

[ronnie624]

26. A politically conscious and involved working class

would be disastrous for the current corporate dominated ruling order. The political/corporate elites (who own and control most media in the U.S.) have no real interest in seeing large numbers of people voting.

[democracy1st]

8. rightwing plants all over the place,politico,AP,and the Times!

[Celebration]

9. we need a Congressional investigation

I don't care if they characterize it as an investigation of Acorn. The unedited tapes need to be subpoenaed, and people put under oath. Then there would be coverage. I still don't know why there hasn't been one. They should have taken advantage of all the outrage and gotten to the bottom of it in the beginning.

At the very least this should have been started after the incident in Louisiana.

[oasis]

10. N.Y. Times=Drudge Report.

:puke:

[jmowreader]

19. No, this is worse

Everyone knows Matt Drudge is a right-wing apologist for the GOP. The Times at least pretends to be a legitimate news source, although at this point in their history the Washington Times is more neutral.

[deminks]

11. MSNBC and NPR are running stories starting last evening

and repeated this morning on Morning Jerk about ACORN and perpetuating the myth that they were brought down by Republicans posing as a pimp and a prostitute. Chuck Todd on Hardball yesterday could not hide his glee that (paraphrasing because I can't find a transcript or a video) "Republicans have demonized ACORN for years, and now they've got 'em!"

[glitch]

27. Even the morning news blip on KPFA repeats the story W/O the hoax exposure.

it's shocking. It also makes me think ACORN had more power than we thought, which was considerable.

Their intransigence on this issue makes me think they have vulnerabilities not yet fully exposed.

[Festivito]

30. Repeated top of every hour and on local news as well.

Just as you said. Perpetuating the myth. Certainly ignoring even the minor retraction from the paper and the overall effect the building set of lies had.

[w4rma]

12. That's right NY Times: Piss off your primary readership. See how many newspapers that sells!

Hint: you'll lose sales. It is times like this where I won't mind seeing a newspaper go bankrupt. The NY Times is already morally bankrupt.

[marshall]

13. The NY Times has been a worthless rag for several years now

Maybe they just don't have the money to hire real reporters. The internet has taken over their business.

[ejbr]

14. Headline News reenforced bad information this morning too. n/t

[veganlush]

15. thanks for posting this with their email addresses..

...I've already put them to good use, having written to all of them asking for a REAL correction. I hope other DUer's reading your posting will take a minute to bombard them with email..:evilgrin:

[Joe Bacon]

16. What do you expect from THE SCREW YORK TIMES?

"All the News That's Fit To Print"? LIE

"All the Propaganda Approved by the Republican Party"? TRUE.

It's a sad day when the Weekly World News is more believable!

[AtLiberty]

17. Thank you, Brad!

K & R!

[The_Commonist]

18. It ain't my father's NYTimes...

...that's for damn sure.

My father was an editor there for 30 years.
He hated what it had become when he retired at the end of the 90's.
It's gotten even worse, Judith Miller and all.
This kind of reporting makes one wonder about EVERYTHING they print.
They have no credibility, which is really too bad.
I've gotten tired of emailing them and saying how much they suck...

[Kingofalldems]

20. Kick and rec for the TSed freeper boy--Yeah!

[redqueen]

22. Who's that?

Also: K&R

[Kingofalldems]

33. I have the name and it's--- right down -----here.

[DirtyDawg]

23. The once proud....

....Grey Lady has morphed into "Baby" Jane Hudson...horribly twisted, painted and hateful.

[Jefferson23]

24. K&R and thanks for posting.

[Jakes Progress]

28. Just this morning, the today show

reported that Acorn was closing, and referred to the organization as the group that got caught giving financial advice to pimps.

It used to be that to better things we followed Shakespeare's advice "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." It seems that the new advice to improve the world is take care of the pretend journalists who infest the media.

[glitch]

29. Why is ACORN disbanding? They should be SUING everybody involved

from the financial backers of the "investigative" hoaxers to everyone who printed the story without vetting it.

[alp227]

31. Gosh why can't the media just report the darn truth

O'Keefe & Giles just made shit up to make their point.

[nyc 4 Biden]

32. NYTimes Jumped Shark Already. This is no surprise.n/t

[rgbecker]

34. Here's my email to Bill Keller...

Dear Sir,

I was pleased to see the NYT finally correcting their mis-reporting of the Okeefe Pimp goes to acorn office story. This story, important enough to end the funding and close an important neighborhood organization, needs to be correctly corrected. O'keefe did not pose as a pimp or even say he was a pimp but rather that he was a law student helping out his accomplice, Ms. Giles. You of all people should realize the importance of the a paper like the New York Times and how its reporting of a story can have great consequences. In this case, the Acorn organization has suffered great financial harm and the communities they serve have suffered great lose because of this horrendous episode. I think you should make sure the correction to your reporting gets as good coverage as your original story now found to be full of lies.

Yours, RGBecker.

[rgbecker]

35. How about an update on Okeefe's phone scam? n/t

[tallahasseedem]

36. Thanks NYT, NOT...

ACORN is disbanding because of the bullshit that they and FOX perpetuated. A correction now does no good. Fuck 'em.

[Uncle Joe]

37. Kicked, but too late to recommend.

Thanks for the thread, Bradblog.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

39. and this is why Bloggers rule and dead tree publications are going out of circ

NY Times has to be shrinking....

[Elmore Furth]

40. These corporate toadies have no balls and no journalistic integrity

They refuse to do any investigation of a story they plainly blew.