CNN avoiding publicizing ACORN's fall?

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I don't know if it was this moron's intent to wire-tap the phones... but entering the offices as a telephone repair tech and asking to gain entry to the phone equipment is certainly stupid if one doesn't intend to tap the phones. (eyes rolled at this moron, not at you, NOG)


BTW, I agree that he did great work regarding ACORN. However, this sort of extremely aggressive "journalism" far too often uses legally questionable means. From what I've read, it sounds like he skirted the "line" well enough on the ACORN stuff. But in this case, I'm not sure if he intended to cross the line of legality, but he certainly has not done himself any favors by making it look like he intended to break the law.

Put another way ... if you don't want to get brought up on phone-tampering charges, don't look like that was what you intended to do when you enter a politician's office under the cover of pretense. Probably better to show up as a florist. I don't think that there's a law against flower arrangement tampering...

 

He's obviously an activist, and I think he's crossed the line way too deep. Even the suspicion that you were there to tap the phones of a political figure or party office tend to be a very deep issue imo - the first thing to pop in my mind was "Watergate".

In retrospect, maybe they didn't intend to go that far, but still it was, at the very least, a major error in judgement and disrespect for the laws. Well, we'll see what the court says about that.

 

... a great job at editing: Anatomy of a smear.

No he didn't and it probably wasn't legal either. Three months later the whole ACORN thing unfolds in its full beauty as the California Attorney General's (AG) office has investigated the matter.

In a press release announcing his report [PDF] (and accompanying 55 pages of attachments and exhibits [PDF] with it), the AG's office says the publicly released videos taken in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Bernardino were "severely edited."

California AG Brown's statement in the announcement is highly critical of O'Keefe, who posed as a pimp in the videos posted on Breitbart's "Big Government" website last year and that were played extensively on Fox News, as well as other non-partisan media outlets:

So there was no basis in the O'Keefe incident for the 'defund ACORN bill'. It was merely an exercise in rain making, providing a much needed excuse for legislation R's wanted to pass for quite a while.

Considering that there was no substance to the allegations created by that miscreant O'Keefe one has to worry about the impact: O'Keefe and Breitbart cooked up a noxious dirty trick - to portray ACORN employees as aiding child prostitution, thus defaming* ACORN in its entirety as a corrupt and criminal organisation. The consequences almost ruined ACORN, and the media uncritically, or unthinkingly, took up the story without fact checking or second guessing it, aiding the hoax O'Keefe and Breitbart perpetrated. And odds are they'll get away with it. Disgusting.

* Being largely unfamiliar with US law, I expect US law to say this about Defamation: Defamation per se as a crime involves falsely accusing someone of a crime or breaking the law, and/or adversely reflecting on a person’s fitness to conduct their business or trade (i.e. crippling the fund raising capability of ACORN). A reasonable case can be made that that is exactly what O'Keefe and Breitbart intended to do and did. The corresponding civil law aspect would then be that this crime makes them liable for the damages ACORN suffered as a result of their actions.

That said, I don't expect that to happen, although it would impose much needed accountability and would perhaps cure O'Keefe and Breitbart of further ambitions in this regard.

 

Ragusa, you've overstated things considerably, which isn't surprising considering ACORN has lied about it (saying the pair were kicked out, asked to leave, and at one point claiming that the audio was dubbed over the video). The full transcripts and audio have been released, so you can review them yourself. Here is a decent review of the whole thing. O'keefe makes clear references to prostitution, asking if there's a tax code for it and the like, as well as flat out saying what the girl does is illegal.

Now, I'll agree that there's no clear evidence of ACORN breaking the law, though some things may come close, and that this only shows that those specific individuals did these things, but the substance of the videos is supported by the full story. The outfit, though, is pure stage. As for the accusation of defamation, I'm sure if ACORN could support that charge, they would have made it by now. ACORN has sued both the filmmakers and the site that released the films, but not on defamation basis, but on the basis that the people interviewed didn't consent to it being taped. That lawsuit has since been dropped. I don't know why, but the article says they may re-file at a later date. Can any lawyers shed any light on this?

 

I don't think I overstate anything.

The unedited California videos have now been posted on the CA Attorney General's website. Investigations into the vids haven't been limited to California, but have been conducted by other states where O'Keefe went to work.

The California DA findings are in tune with the Brooklyn DA's office, which called the vids a "heavily edited splice job" weeks ago. The California DA findings also echo a largely unreported independent investigation [PDF] by former MA Attorney General Scott Harshbarger early last December.

There cannot be much reasonable doubt after that that O'Keefe not only set up the ACORN employees (i.e. he never appeared in his pimp costume, that apparently being thing her also edited in later) but also liberally edited the footage he made together to create a completely different narrative. For a splendid example for how that works.

 

I can't get any of those videos to work (something about Windows Media Player not recognizing the format), but thanks for the link. The videos are definitely 'heavily edited' considering that they condense 40-ish minutes of footage into about 9 minutes, but that doesn't mean there's anything misleading in the videos. Is the content in them markedly different (i.e. do the edited clips actually portray things happening that didn't happen)?

Incidentally, while looking through Youtube, I found several of the videos actually show him entering the ACORN office without the 'pimp fur' on. Actually, she's wearing the fur. I also found this. Apparently the ACORN voice was edited out due to the lawsuit.

So, basically, is there anything aside from the outfit that may confuse people as to what actually happened?

Concerning the independant review, though:

And, more tellingly:

In other words, they came to no actual conclusion (as far as I could tell) as to whether the editing produced and accurate summation of the event or a fabrication. This isn't surprising, though, considering that it wasn't actually an inestigation of the videos, but of internal operations of ACORN (across the board, the video appears to just be one portion of the investigation). The results are advice to ACORN on how to reform it's operations.

As for the Brooklyn DA, it turns out he has associations with ACORN. At a minimum, he should have handed this off to someone who didn't.

 

Don't you think you can find that out on your own? If you search for hints on 'how to deceive through editing', watch Colbert again.

 

Considering I can't view the original videos on my own... no. Oddly, I can't even download the videos. I watched Colbert. He does a wonderful job of showing how it could be done (at Sean Hannity's expense), but I don't see anything about how it was done.

 

So let's not rush into uncharted territory (with new ideas like that ACORN not being the crooked organisation as which the R's persistently demonise it) unless you can see that for yourself by reviewing the videos? To wit, I am mocking you.

I'd also like to point out that it is not an insurmountable technical challenge to make the videos play (hint: *.wmv files play on the player that can make Windows Media Video play)

Of course you can skip that and just try this: O'Keefe is a fraud. As there never was that 'pimp' at ACORN, then logically ACORN employees didn't advice a 'pimp' on how to set up a bordello for illegal immigrant under age prostitutes. The videos had to be edited to have that storyline. There is no there there. The scandal is phony.

However, the damage caused is real.

The dangerous thing about the video affair is that R's like Breitbart see it as a(nother) confirmation that simply throwing sh** at someone is an effective tactic, because, even though it will not last forever, it sticks long enough to cause real damage. It took ACORN and the DAs some three months to work this up and find that there was nothing. The media didn't even bother to look close enough to find out. In the meanwhile the 'defund ACORN bill' has passed, and ACORN is facing severe financial problems.

If you start such a stunt three weeks ahead of an election directed at an opposing candidate, the opposing candidate will be able to prove his innocence only after he has lost. I mean after all, we now know John McCain never fathered an illegitimate black child. But the rumour at the time influenced voters form whom race mattered and that cost McCain the Republican nomination against Bush. And, of course, Karl Rove had nothing to do with it.

That's not politics as usual but scorched earth tactics (which may just be politics as usual, but that state would then be something I find neither desirable nor healthy).

 

Ragusa, you need to be careful, you may hurt your back if you keep bending over backwards like that trying to defend ACORN

I don't really care about the "pimp" incident. Even if the ACORN employees did commit a crime, I'm not convinced that it is indicitive of the organization. What is indicitive is that as an organization they committed multiple cases of voter fraud. Of course the Republicans are upset as this fraud was obviously an attempt to benefit Democrats. Republicans are much more sophisticated, if they want to commit voter fraud they just hack into the voting machines /cue conspiracy theorists

 

I am not exerting myself And I don't have a dog in this fight either.

My interest lies here: What I do is to wonder about the fervour of belief in ACORN's guilt when there is so little basis in reality for it. On a regular basis the allegations against ACORN have been found in inquiries to be baseless, and as a result prosecutions were dropped.

Things do not become true by merit of repetition, and assertion doesn't create fact. What repeated assertion does it to create social fact i.e. belief in the veracity of the assertions. Now that can then again create its own facts, and manifest itself in frivolities like the 'defund ACORN bill'.

The reason why in my never humble opinion ACORN became the focus of GOP wrath is that ACORN's voter registration efforts run counter to GOP voter suppression efforts. That's why the GOP makes ACORN a problem, because with ACORN gone and their efforts to register minority voters (who would not vote GOP) they have an easier time in tight election races and their efforts to purge voter rolls are more likely to succeed. It also makes it easier for the GOP to call for a recount if their candidate loses, because after all there has been allegations of voter fraud. It also allows them to easier justify voter roll purges - quite cynically - as precautions against voter fraud! Thus it is no accidents that in my observation you hear allegations of fraud against ACORN from the GOP and from swing states and in tight races only. It is beneficial for the GOP to do so, and they have the nerve and gall to follow through with that.

I find that tactic sleazy and despicable because baseless accusations of vote fraud, and that's what we're talking about, undermine trust in the democratic system.

 

Whether it's committing fraud, or counting votes, the GOP sees ACORN as a competitor, as you correctly point out.

 

Weren't several of those instances cases when ACORN employees submitted those lists to try to get more money out of the organization? I think the whole scandal about voter registration fraud started when... ACORN announced it. They basically reported that some of their guys were scamming them .

ACORN is afaik required to submit any information, faulty or no; it can't not submit it.

 

That's the odd part! I CAN play .wmvs with that player, just not those. And, since I can't download them, I can't try to open them with a different player. The error that pops up says that 'Windows Media Player cannot play the files because the specified protocol is not supported'.

Aha, I had to access it through 'open a url' and change the mms:// to http://! Don't ask me why. Anyway, in the San Diego video, the guy clearly mentions prostitution and underage girls at the 5:35 mark, at 8:15, and at 11:45. At 8:55, she says she wants to get away from her 'pimp' (not the guy) to work independantly. The result? At 15:29 the ACORN employee suggests they attend a seminar next month, at 17:28 he advertizes their First Time Buyers program. At 18:38 they start talking about tax fraud, and the ACORN employee goes along. At 19:10, the ACORN emplyee says they can help if the couple comes to the seminar, they have two lawyers that can help them, etc. At 21:50, the ACORN employee says they can claim the illegal, underage prostitutes as dependants on the tax forms. At 35:10, the ACORN employee ensures them that ACORN won't get them in trouble. At 36:50 the ACORN employee says he has contacts in Tijuana to help them cross.

Now, as far as I know, ACORN took no illegal action in this video, but then ACORN took no action at all in the video, they just talked. I doubt you could prosecute for anything based on that, but the content of the full video supports the content of the edited videos.

Are the transcripts similarly fake? Because the 'full, unedited' transcripts make it rather clear that at least some of the ACORN people understood they were giving advice to a man who was setting up his girlfriend's brothel with her (aka, her pimp, regardless of the attire). In the San Diego video, the ACORN employee clearly understood he was giving advice to people setting up a brothel with illegal, underage girls in the sex trade.

 

Hindsight is 20/20.

A just released congressional report clears ACORN of wrongdoing [PDF] — after the group was forced to disband. Oops.

In a sane world one would have expected such an evaluation before decisions were being made that would predictably destroy ACORN. It appears that at the very least the 'defund ACORN bill' was a rash decision.

The report found no evidence of fraud, lax oversight or misuse of federal funds. It found that ACORN had adequately accounted for spending $40 million awarded by the federal government. No irregularities in spending were found; oversight was adequate as well. Interestingly, according to the report, the Federal Election Commission had closed all investigations into voter fraud by the group

No quotes from me so you people will have to read the report yourself.

PS: I wonder whether FOX bothers reporting that ...

 

Now all that remains is for the guy who conducted the "exposure" to be convicted, and the picture would be complete. Mind you, he did get 3 years probation after his stint as telephone repairman... Did that make the news, btw?

I especially liked the below passage:

"The judge told O'Keefe he was particularly concerned about his role as ringleader.

"One of the things involved in being a journalist is you're going to have to learn to draw the line," Knowles said. "In this instance, you drew it in the wrong spot."

O'Keefe said he would release the results of another such investigation very soon. "This is about sunlight and we're the going to be the disinfectant," O'Keefe said without answering any questions."

Well, it doesn't sound like the guy agrees with the court's verdict or intends to change his ways much.

 

It doesn't matter whether they actually did any wrong-doing; for FOX it was, "Mission accomplished."

 

What a dirt bag! This is the best the conservative "movement" can do? This moron shut down funding to ACRON with his phony "interviews?" To think this loser had the Dems all worried. It just proves how spineless they really are. What a joke:

 

Sometimes, morality and values must be sacrificed for the greater victory of morality and values...

Rags, I miss your old quote!

 

Shaman,
which one?

Chandos,
Breitbart on O'Keefe and Giles on Hannity, September 14, 2009

Hannity on the same show:

In light of your last post, fantastic prospects. What a bunch of a**holes.