Now, it's all fucking coming back to roost..the blatant bullshit attacks on ACORN.
But this time around..the MSM is helping the fuckwits destroy ACORN with their lies.
Rachel Maddow tonight had an excellent section on ACORN and the fuckery perpetrated by the Rethugs and their big business cronies to bring ACORN down. It's also about the MSM and how they willingly helped these fuckwits destroy a group that has spent decades helping the poor and working poor.
Bringing ACORN down serves only the interests of big business, the banks, the rightwing nutters and those elected officials that take their lobbying money..namely the Rethugs. There is a report/study (pdf of the full study here) out by a couple of professors that shows the percentage of news stories/reports that were outright lies about ACORN and yet the MSM did not do their fucking homework, and they went along with the liars by reporting the bullshit as fact.
If there ever was a reason to despise the MSM, this is it. They are helping to destroy a non-profit agency who's only goal is to help those less fortunate and give them the power of the voting booth to have their voices heard. The following is directly from the report/study and if you actually take the time to read all of the statistics..it should make your skin crawl..or at the very least piss you the fuck off at the NY Times, The Washington Post and every other worthless corporate-run news agency:
Using the controversy over the community group ACORN, this study illustrates the way that the media help set the agenda for public debate, and frame the way that debate is shaped. We describe how opinion entrepreneurs (primarily business and conservative groups and individuals) set the story in motion as early as 2006, the conservative echo chamber orchestrated its anti‐ACORN campaign in 2008, the McCain‐Palin campaign picked it up, and the mainstream media reported its allegations without investigating their truth or falsity. As a result, the relatively littleknown community organization became the subject of a major news story in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, to the point where 82% of the respondents in an October 2008 national survey reported they had heard about ACORN.
• Although ACORN is involved in many community activities around the country, including efforts to improve housing, wages, access to credit, and public education, the dominant story frame about ACORN was “voter fraud.” The “voter fraud” frame appeared in 55% of the 647 news stories about the community organization in 15 mainstream news organizations during 2007 and 2008. The news media stories about ACORN were overwhelmingly negative, reporting allegations by Republicans and
conservatives.
• In October 2008, at the peak of the campaign season, negative attacks dominated the news about ACORN:
76% of the stories focused on allegations of voter fraud
8.7% involved accusations that public funds were being funneled to ACORN
7.9% of the stories involved charges that ACORN is a front for registering
Democrats
3.1% involved blaming ACORN for the mortgage scandal
• The mainstream news media failed to fact‐check persistent allegations of “voter fraud” despite the existence of easily available countervailing evidence. The media also failed to distinguish allegations of voter registration problems from allegations of actual voting irregularities. They also failed to distinguish between allegations of wrongdoing and actual wrongdoing. For example:
82.8% of the stories about ACORN’s alleged involvement in voter fraud failed to mention that actual voter fraud is very rare (only 17.2% did mention it)
80.3% of the stories about ACORN’s alleged involvement in voter fraud failed to mention that ACORN was reporting registration irregularities to authorities, as required to do by law
85.1% of the stories about ACORN’s alleged involvement in voter fraud failed to note that ACORN was acting to stop incidents of registration problems by its (mostly temporary) employees when it became aware of these problems
95.8% of the stories about ACORN’s alleged involvement in voter fraud failed to provide deeper context, especially efforts by Republican Party officials to use allegations of “voter fraud” to dampen voting by low‐income and minority Americans, including the firing of U.S. Attorneys who refused to cooperate with the politicization of voter fraud accusations – firings that ultimately led to the 4 resignation of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
61.4% of the stories about ACORN’s alleged involvement in voter fraud failed to acknowledge that Republicans were trying to discredit Obama with an ACORN “scandal”
47.8% of the news stories about ACORN in October 2008 linked the organization to candidate Barack Obama, most of them seeking to discredit him and his campaign through guilt‐by‐association.
• The media bias against ACORN was evident not only in its focus on allegations of voter fraud but also in the language used to describe ACORN, such as leftist, left‐wing, front (for Democrats), radical, activist, political, militant, and socialist.
• The attacks on ACORN originated with business groups and political groups that opposed ACORN’s organizing work around living wages, predatory lending, and registration of low‐income and minority voters. These groups created frames to discredit ACORN that were utilized by conservative ”opinion entrepreneurs” within the conservative “echo chamber” – publications, TV and radio talk shows, blogs and websites, think tanks, and columnists – to test, refine, and circulate narrative frames
about ACORN. These conservative “opinion entrepreneurs” were successful in injecting their perspective on ACORN into the mainstream media.
• Perhaps the peak moment in the attack on ACORN occurred at the presidential debate between Obama and McCain on Oct. 15, 2008. Although not asked a question about ACORN, McCain injected the issue on his own, saying: “We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama’s relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.“
Clearly this statement was newsworthy. This study reveals, however, that
opinion entrepreneurs, the conservative echo chamber, and the mainstream media had laid the groundwork for McCain’s attack on ACORN.
• Local newspapers, which were more likely to verify the actual voting conditions of county election boards, were much less susceptible to the politicized “voter fraud” frame than the national news media.
And I pity you.
