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James OâKeefe, the pimp-playing provocateur who set out to target ACORN with a video camera, a cheesy costume, and a small wad of cash, succeeded in doing more than embarrassing the community-organizing association. OâKeefe, 25, and his colleague Hannah Giles, 20, have also stoked conservative anger at the mainstream pressâand won a measure of respect from some unlikely sources. Conor Friedersdorf, a sometime critic of conservative media, âcommend[s] the gonzo journalismâ committed by OâKeefe and Giles. Andrew Sullivan agrees. And Jon Stewartâwho, as much as he might reject the title, is every liberalâs favorite press criticâused the episode to blast the mainstream media. âWhere were the real reporters on this story?â Stewart asked. âIâm a fake journalist, and Iâm embarrassed these guys scooped me!â
OâKeefe has accepted the praise: his and Gilesâs efforts, he told the New York Post, represent nothing less than “the future of activism and investigative reporting.â
Still, due respect to Stewart, but itâs not hard to understand why OâKeefe and Giles uncovered this information when professional journalists hadnât: itâs because they understand the enterprise in which theyâre engaged in fundamentally different ways than professional journalists generally do. Before we urge the mainstream press to look to OâKeefe and Giles as a model, it makes sense to take a look at where theyâre coming from.
It should be said upfront that Giles and OâKeefe uncovered some truly damning stuff. Some of the seemingly-incriminating video they recorded has turned out not to hold up to scrutinyâincluding one ACORN employeeâs statement that she had murdered her ex-husband. (It appears that neither the filmmakers nor Fox News, which has prominently aired the footage, bothered to fact-check that ârevelationâ before first publicizing it.) Much of what the filmmakers came up with, though, is undeniably appalling: when somebody doesnât bat an eye at the prospect of trafficking in underage sex workers, thereâs something wrong.
So, good for Giles and OâKeefeâthey went out to get the goods on ACORN, and they got them. As Ta-Nehisi Coates put it, âDude is doing his job.â And if ACORN is chastened by this episode and moved to better monitor its employees, there will even be public benefit.
But the underlying question is why OâKeefe saw this as his job. In a front-page story in todayâs Washington Post, Andrew Breitbart, the conservative media entrepreneur whose Web site hosts the videos, is quoted as saying, âEverybody that is a conservative news junkie thinks that ACORN is the most important institution for us to uncover to the American public.â And why is that?
OâKeefe offered the following explanation in his commentary accompanying the first video post:
ACORN has ascended. They elect our politicians and receive billions in tax money. Their world is a revolutionary, socialistic, atheistic world, where all means are justifiable. And they create chaos, again, for itâs [sic] own sake. It is time for us to be studying and applying their tactics, many of which are ideologically neutral. It is time, as Hannah said as we walked out of the ACORN facility, for conservative activists to âcreate chaos for glory.â
This is, on at least one point, false. According to a report produced in July by Rep. Darrell Issa, whoâs no friend of ACORN, the group has received about $53 million in federal funds since 1994. And as Chris Edwards, a scholar at the Cato Instituteâalso no friend of ACORNânotes, the groupâs âshare of overall federal subsidies is tiny.â As todayâs Post story makes clear, to conclude that ACORN receives âbillions in tax moneyâ requires a staggering misreading of reality.
Of course, the âbillionsâ serves to make ACORN look hugely important, which is a much broader misreading. Leaving aside OâKeefeâs millenarian language and his adoption of leftist tactics and frames, his comment reflects a theory of who holds political power that isâŚwell, letâs just say it: kind of crazy. ACORN is not insignificant, to be sure, andâas far as OâKeefeâs âelect our politiciansâ claim goesâits voter-registration drives in low-income, minority communities have no doubt helped Democratic candidates. But the idea that the organizationâwhose offices are shown in all their shabbiness in the videosâcontrols political outcomes in this country is hard to fathom. If that were the case, why would politicians of both parties be falling over themselves to cut off funding for the group? The videos are powerful, but true giants donât go down that easy.
âJust because Bill O’Reilly targets someoneâit doesn’t mean they don’t deserve it,â Andrew Sullivan noted. Thatâs true, but so is the inverse: just because you found some dirt, it doesnât mean youâre not paranoid. OâKeefe unearthed some outrageous behavior, but what he found does not prove the understanding of politics that led him to this story. And the fact that the mainstream press does not share that understanding should not be an indictment.
Of course, most of OâKeefeâs conservative audiences wonât view the videos as simple âinformation,â anyhow. Instead, theyâll likely see them as Michael Mooreâs liberal fans see his documentariesâas confirmations of their own worldview. And, with coverage of the ACORN story coming mostly from conservative-leaning outlets, it seems likely to perpetuate a troubling trend: the sorting of the public into different fact universes. At Outside the Beltway, James Joyner writes that this creates new responsibilities for the mainstream press:
Itâs simply unwise for large media outlets that claim to deliver âall the news thatâs fit to printâ to ignore big political stories when millions of people are talking about themâŚ
âŚitâs now incumbent on the mainstream press to investigate the big stories that percolate in those venues to ensure that theyâre shared outside of self-selected cliques and to present the story in proper context, not just the cherry picked facts touted by the partisans. Is there more to Van Jones than youthful sympathy with Communists and having put his weight behind the Truther movement? Is ACORN corrupt at its core or is it merely mismanaged, with a shoddy business model that invites corruption?…The partisan media generally lack both the resources and incentives to report these things.
This hits the mark (though perhaps âexplaining just what ACORN isâ should be added to the list of tasks). And, in fact, it seems to be what is happening: major newspapers like the Post and The New York Times have followed up on the story, noting ACORNâs mistakes, providing additional context, and giving it about the amount of attention it deserves. Going forward, we will probably see efforts from leading mainstream outlets to deliver more in-depth coverage of the group. In all likelihood, this coverage will leave people of various political stripes unhappy. But it will also represent the pressâs standard strategy for handling stories of this type. In this case, at least, the standard strategy still seems like the right one.
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