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Apples to Acorn

Fox News may be ahead in quantity of Acorn-related coverage (between Saturday and today at 3:00pm, TVEyes shows 556 mentions of “acorn” on Fox News, to...
October 15, 2008

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Fox News may be ahead in quantity of Acorn-related coverage (between Saturday and today at 3:00pm, TVEyes shows 556 mentions of “acorn” on Fox News, to CNN’s 67 and MSNBC’s 17; if you search on “a.c.o.r.n.” the numbers are 280 for Fox, 92 for CNN and 33 for MSNBC.). But CNN is clearly winning in quality, as evidenced by this story intro:

… an Acorn not falling from the candidate’s tree? Barack Obama and John McCain’s connections to a group being investigated for possible voter registration fraud…

Both acorns and apples, yes, fall from trees but only apples have an idiom about it. Why nut-up an apple idiom for a story intro (can “Acorn of candidate’s ear” be far behind?) when acorns have their own idioms? Even a blind pig can find an Acorn is probably not an option in the age of LipstickOnAPigGate but there’s always Mighty oaks from little Acorns grow. (Mighty votes?)

A few minutes ago CNN used another apple expression and then just tacked Acorn on at the end:

Could a few bad apples be hurting Acorn?

How ’bout them Acorn? Which is to say: Megan is working on a piece that really digs into recent Acorn-related press coverage (check Campaign Desk later today).

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Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.