Is Glenn Greenwald the Future of News? - Bill Keller/NYT

[Uncle Joe]

61. If you really wanted to know all it takes is Google and you could find it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Community_Organizations_for_Reform_Now

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was a collection of community-based organizations in the United States that advocated for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other social issues. At its peak ACORN had over 500,000 members and more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in over 100 cities across the U.S.,[3][4] as well as in Argentina, Canada, Mexico, and Peru.[5] ACORN was founded in 1970 by Wade Rathke and Gary Delgado.[6] It filed for Chapter 7 liquidation on November 2, 2010, effectively closing the organization.[7] Many ACORN members and organizers formed new state-wide organizations.[8]

ACORN's voter registration drives, which it has conducted since the 1980s, have been frequently mischaracterized by supporters of Republican candidates as "voter fraud". ACORN received significant negative publicity in the wake of the 2009 production and publication of videos, which were later found to be partially falsified and selectively edited, by two conservative activists, James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles. The activists used hidden camera recordings to portray low-level ACORN employees as engaging in criminal activity, apparently advising them on how to hide prostitution activities and avoid taxes.[9] A nationwide controversy ensued, immediately resulting in a loss of funding from government and private donors,[10][11][12] including legislative amendments to spending bills in the United States House and Senate prohibiting government funding of the group.

Following the publication of the videos and withdrawal of funding, four different independent investigations by various state and city Attorneys General and the GAO released in 2009 and 2010 cleared ACORN, finding its employees had not engaged in criminal activities and that the organization had managed its federal funding appropriately, and calling the videos deceptively and selectively edited to present the workers in the worst possible light. Despite this, by March 2010, 15 of ACORN's 30 state chapters had already closed[10] and the group announced it was closing its remaining state chapters and disbanding.[13]

(snip)

On December 7, 2009, the former Massachusetts Attorney General, after an independent internal investigation of ACORN, found the videos that had been released appeared to have been edited, "in some cases substantially". He found no evidence of criminal conduct by ACORN employees, but concluded that ACORN had poor management practices that contributed to unprofessional actions by a number of its low-level employees.[96][97][98][99] On March 1, 2010, the District Attorney's office for Brooklyn determined that the videos were "heavily edited" and "many of the seemingly crime-encouraging answers were taken out of context so as to appear more sinister",[100] and concluded that there was no criminal wrongdoing by the ACORN staff in the videos from the Brooklyn ACORN office.[101][102] On April 1, 2010, an investigation by the California Attorney General found the videos from Los Angeles, San Diego and San Bernardino to be "heavily edited,"[9] and the investigation did not find evidence of criminal conduct on the part of ACORN employees.[9][88] On June 14, 2010, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its findings which showed that ACORN evidenced no sign that it, or any of its related organizations, mishandled any federal money they had received.[103][104]

Now's here's how the "non-subjective" corporate media covered Brietbarts' subjective propaganda.

http://www.salon.com/2010/07/21/acorn_10/

Recalling Breitbart from his days as eager lackey to Matt Drudge, I warned from the beginning that nothing he produced would resemble journalism. More than once since then, I’ve mentioned the accumulating evidence of deception by O’Keefe and Breitbart in creating and then publicizing the ACORN tale. It was a “scandal” that became a national story only after wildly biased coverage on Fox News Channel, followed by sloppy, scared reporting in mainstream outlets, notably the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and the national TV networks (some of whom flagellated themselves for failing to publicize this canard sooner!).

Investigations by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes, California Attorney General Jerry Brown, and the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, among others, have served to exonerate ACORN of the most outrageous charges of criminality (while still criticizing ACORN employees and leadership). More important, from the perspective of journalistic ethics, those investigations revealed that the videotapes released and promoted by Breitbart’s website were selectively and deceptively edited to serve as propaganda, not news.

Here's subjective Greenwald's take.

http://www.salon.com/2009/09/17/acorn_hysteria/

Earlier this week, I wrote about how the Fox-News/Glenn-Beck/Rush-Limbaugh leadership trains its protesting followers to focus the vast bulk of their resentment and anxieties on largely powerless and downtrodden factions, while ignoring, and even revering, the outright pillaging by virtually omnipotent corporate interests that own and control their Government (and, not coincidentally, Fox News). It’s hard to imagine a more perfectly illustrative example of all of that than the hysterical furor over ACORN.

ACORN has received a grand total of $53 million in federal funds over the last 15 years — an average of $3.5 million per year. Meanwhile, not millions, not billions, but trillions of dollars of public funds have been, in the last year alone, transferred to or otherwise used for the benefit of Wall Street. Billions of dollars in American taxpayer money vanished into thin air, eaten by private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, led by Halliburton subsidiary KBR. All of those corporate interests employ armies of lobbyists and bottomless donor activities that ensure they dominate our legislative and regulatory processes, and to be extra certain, the revolving door between industry and government is more prolific than ever, with key corporate officials constantly ending up occupying the government positions with the most influence over those industries.


Exactly as one would expect, the prime beneficiaries of all of that pillaging continue to grow. The banks that almost brought the world economy to collapse but then received massive public largesse because they were “too big to fail” are now bigger than ever; as The Washington Post delicately put it: ”The crisis may be turning out very well for many of the behemoths that dominate U.S. finance.” Everything involving the government turns out well for these “behemoths” because they own and control the U.S. Government. Just this week, The Post detailed how the government and Wall St. are now so intertwined that banking executives are spending vast resources to increase their presence in Washington:

(snip)

But look at who the lead supporters are: Rush Limbaugh, the Murdoch-owned Fox News, Glenn Beck, the right-wing blogosphere and talk radio generally, business groups led by Dick Armey. Does anyone actually believe that what motivates them is concern over the excessive, corrupting influence of Wall Street and large corporations in government? Please. They are pure GOP partisans who are exploiting citizen anger to undermine Democratic politicians in order to return the GOP to political power. It’s nothing more noble or profound than that. In fact, many of the movement leaders are among the most vocal advocates for unfettered corporate power. From the expansions of the Surveillance State and endless imperial power to strident opposition to lobbyist reforms, they support the very policies that most empower those corrupting groups and further the government-corporate merger. If they’re so concerned about excessive government power, debt and corporate influence and corruption, where were they during the Bush era? Cheering it all on. They didn’t discover their “small-government principles” until Barack Obama was inaugurated and it became a means for undermining his administration and recovering from Republican political ruin.

There is much more on the link, if you care to read it.

The point is subjective Greenwald defends unfair attacks against ACORN against subjective Brietbart, Beck, Limbaugh and Fox "News" while the non-subjective corporate media of which Keller is a proud member of follows swallows subjective Brietbart, Beck, Limbaugh and Fox "News" hook, line and sinker.

The corporate media's pretense of being non-subjective is nothing but a deceit against their readers.