Joe Conason on ACORN Video: It's Not Journalism Unless They Report Everything That Happened- It's Propaganda
By Heather Friday Sep 11, 2009 4:00pm
From Lou Dobbs Tonight, in what looks like another potential hit piece on ACORN, Joe Conason and Keith Richburg point out a few problems with the conservative filmmakers' "reporting". Of course Dick Cheney sychophant Ron Christie disagrees with them, and as usual pulls the Republican stunt when debating anyone on television. Never stop talking if the host lets you get away with it, feign being insulted when you're interrupted by the other guest who would like to get a word in and is sick of your lying, and then filibuster until the times runs out for the segment.
PILGRIM: We are back with our panel, and on this note, why don't we start with this controversy, Keith, of what do you make of this discussion?
RICHBURG: You know, it's another embarrassment for ACORN. It's another embarrassment, you know. And the only reason they're on the radar screen is because they became well known -- most people, they've never heard of ACORN two years ago.
They became well known because they were helping "Get Out the Vote" efforts for the Obama campaign. You know, so it's an embarrassment for ACORN. I don't know if it's going to go beyond that and I'd be interested if that is true, what the spokesman said, that these conservative filmmaker went around to three or four offices and basically got thrown out with this ruse, and they found one office where there were two people stupid enough to sit down and give them this kind of silly advice.
And it sounds to me like that's just entrapment. You know? Let's go around various offices until we can finally trick somebody into...
CONASON: It's not journalism unless they report everything that happened. It's propaganda. If you're a reporter and you're doing something this, then you would report, yes, we went to the four offices and one said, you know, fell for -- took the bait.
If you don't report that, if you act as if you went into one office and they did it, then that's dishonest. The other thing is, Bill mentioned that it's a two-party state. The filmmakers could be liable to civil or criminal action, in fact, for taping people without telling them in the state of Maryland. I have a reporter who works in the capital district that knows about this. It came up during the Linda Tripp affair whether Tripp could be prosecuted in Maryland for recording Monica Lewinsky unlawfully. So that could be an interesting sideline, and may be why the filmmaker did not show up to be on television to discuss this tonight.
