The Wall Street Journal runs a story on the tactics used by Huffington Post co-founder Andrew Breitbart, in order to ensure that the Democratic Party's media allies had to cover it. Which they did - very slowly, and late, when they absolutely had to, after all of ACORN's denials had been reported at face value, while its accusers were attacked, until subsequent video releases demolished the earlier denials.
The crux of the problem is illustrated by the fact that this strategy was necessary, because the criminal organization in question is allied with one side of the political aisle. So Breitbart borrowed generously from, inter alia, Obama icon Saul Alinky:
"This plan wasn't just a means to defend against the media's desire to attack the messenger," Mr. Breitbart says. "It was also a means to attack the media and to expose them... for the partisan hacks that they are.... The crux of the strategy was the timing of the video releases. "Every step of the way, we wanted to plant traps" for Acorn and its defenders, he says.... Mr. Breitbart claims victory, and in extravagant terms: "At every step of the way, we were correct. At every step of the way, the mainstream media took the lies of Acorn. At every step of the way, the mainstream media attempted to cover up for Acorn... If they think that Acorn or the Democratic Party or the NEA [JK: which scandal Breitart also exposed] or the Office of Public Engagement is the primary target, they couldn't be more wrong. It is the Democrat-media complex. It is the mainstream media. No jury would need more evidence at this point. The Clark Hoyts of the world should just put their pens down and retire right now and walk away."
Later in the story, WSJ's James Taranto steps into the role of media defender, but his defense has several problems.
One of which is that the tactics he sees as so problematic didn't seem to be much of a speed bump when it comes to, say, gun shows.
Taranto's complaints about Breitbart's release strategy, meanwhile, evade the issue of why it was necessary, given a very long pattern of discriminatory treatment based on political affiliation. Something Taranto himself noted as recently as Sept 14/09, in a devastating "Call Fox" article. An excerpt:
"A quote attributed to the fired Washington Acorn employees sums things up nicely. The AP reported that they had advised Giles and O'Keefe that they "must be low-key about the business, or people could 'call Fox' "--not the New York Times, or CBS or NBC, or "the media," but Fox.
To be sure, Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart are advocacy journalists with distinct points of view. But the supposedly impartial mainstream media also claim to have an "adversary" relationship with the government. That they have left this field to a few upstarts suggests that they have a point of view, too--one that is, in the age of Obama, far more compliant than adversarial."
Then, too, the videos show what they show. So long as they are authentic, the issues of conduct and investigation (or lack thereof) that they raise demand coverage - which should not have to be forced.
But it did have to be, and it does have to be (case in point: how much investigation and coverage has there been so far of Sen. Dodd's corruption, as he remains a leading member of the committee regulating Wall Street?). Kudos to Breitbart for saying it.
May the day come soon when the Democrat-Media complex lies broken, replaced with either a countervailing party media complex of representative size (a common pattern in many other countries), or a truly diverse mainstream media that actually sees itself as journalists, rather than as political players and party enablers. Or one that simply simply lies in ruins.
Any of those outcomes would be better than the open accomplices to corruption that we have now.
There is something to be uncomfortable about here, for sure. You have to hand it to Breitbart for the way he played his cards, but the cold-bloodedness of it is less admirable, even if we are convinced that nothing less would have worked. Perfectly ethical journalistic investigations of ACORN have been consistently ignored.
Breitbart took careful aim at the huge hypocritical holes in the MSM armor:
1. The establishment media is increasingly strident in their insistence that bloggers, and independent media types of all stripes, are not real journalists. They can't have it both ways - if the pajama people can't wear the old school tie, they don't have to follow the old school rules. But when bloggers are frequently bringing issues to national attention, obviously the old school is not doing its job.
2. The establishment media itself has made a mockery of journalistic standards when it suits a liberal-left political purpose, as a long string of protracted media scandals over the past several years can attest. They were very poorly equipped to respond to the ACORN sting with righteous indignation, and Breitbart of course knew that.
3. As much as the establishment media loves to strike heroic poses, they are cowards clear to the bone, and when forced to confrontation they predictably behave like cowards. Breitbart didn't miss that lesson, either.
I don't think Breitbart is a bad guy, but this is a road on which we should observe some caution. Gandalf never trusted Saruman, because he had "studied the Enemy's arts too deeply."
Let's not forget that Saul Alinsky was an inflamed rectum, after all.
BTW, to illustrate #2 in my previous remark, I recently saw a really bad movie called Perfect Stranger, and you can learn an awful lot about lazy liberal assumptions by watching Hollywood bombs.
Halle Berry, playing a reporter for a very thinly disguised clone of the NYT, poses as a member of a pro-family group and secretly records a conservative senator confessing to an affair with a male intern. When the paper quashes the story - not for ethical reasons, but because of political cold feet - the unreconstructed hippie bursts right out of the scriptwriter: "We're supposed to be reporting the news, Man, not covering it up!"
Granted, this is just a movie, and the scriptwriter probably never took a class in journalistic ethics. On the other hand, maybe he did, or might as well have. The attitudes of the unreconstructed hippie, the professional journalist, and the White House communications director are increasingly indistinguishable.
This is the naked emperor that Breitbart is kicking all over the landscape.
...because the criminal organization in question is allied with one side of the political aisle.
Funny, I too think of the Democratic party as a criminal organization.
The approach Mr. O'Keefe and Ms. Giles used—lying to prospective sources or subjects—is grossly unethical by the standards of institutional journalism.
Tarantino appears to inhabit some kind of fantasy world where journalists only lie to their audience. Googling "hidden camera investigation" turns up a lot more than biggovernment.com. The ACORN sting is was identical to the work that created the reputation of every Hero of Journalism from Upton Sinclair to 60 Minutes - and all of a sudden it's unethical? Please.
I've been drawn on this issue, becomes while I'm glad someone finally put up on this issue (instead of just making empty allegations). I wish this had been headed by a more traditional establishment. (media or government... although again, Bush pushed to find allegations for 8 years)
Face it, media just plain refuses to do work these days. Even Fox news (the bastion of right wing 'reporting') would never bother to do the work to 'investigate' a story this way. Media has become an entertainment grab bag... 5 minutes of style that doesn't have time for substance. Whether it's left-wing or right-wing, it just skims off the top.
And this is a big deal, because they're are lots of companies that are WORSE than ACORN, yet still receive government support & much more money. I'm in a rush here, but take KBR as a single example, which is attempting to silence rape cases by it's employees.
Of course they don't do investigative reporting. That sort of thing costs money - even Breitbart had to pay his faux-pimp. And with this kind of investigative reporting, you can strike out. ACORN employees might have, for example, refused to offer tax advice for the importation of underaged girls for work in a tax-subsidized brothel. Indeed, you'd think that you'd expect it to happen that way!
But if you're a news organization, spending money on investigations that might not pan out is a waste. "Mayor Actually Clean as a Whistle" doesn't sell the papers. And if you start running investigations of stories about government officials, don't expect them to leak you (anonymously, of course) the reactions you want to the political news of the day...
Of course, the obvious counter to that problem is to run government as transparently as possible - the less "secret" information there is, the fewer opportunities to trade privileged access to that information in exchange for political influence of the news.
Avatar, one thing I've been saying for a while, and this continues to fall in this category, it that the death of solid reporting is more dire than a partisan news divide.
It's one thing to have different opinions. It's another when our media starts handing out different facts (or heavily muted facts). At that point, it becomes difficult to identify the real problems. (unless said problems can be fixed with two people and a grainy video tape.... which is pretty rare).