ACORN Scandal in The Washington Post: Ready…Aim…Scrub!

Maura Flynn
Yesterday I picked up The Washington Post from my doorstep and scanned the front page for coverage of the latest ACORN scandal. Call me naive if you want to, but The Post is my hometown paper and I maintain high expectations. Yes, even from well-educated liberals in the elite media.

This turns out to be “my bad,” as the kids say. Apparently I had failed to take into account what a huge news day it was. The Washington Post couldn’t possibly make room on page one for a story about a taxpayer-funded organization conspiring with a “pimp” and “prostitute” to create brothels for underage sex slaves from El Salvador. If they had done so they would not have had the space to publish a 5 by 7 inch photograph of “Principal Judy K.” squirting hand sanitizer on six-year-olds at Matsunaga Elementary School. The photograph is accompanied by an article titled, “Ready…Aim…Scrub!” Kids have germs? STOP THE PRESSES! Bob Woodward is doubtlessly kicking himself for missing that one. (Sorry Bob, you snooze, you lose).

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Another front page stunner (column one, nine inches), informs the reader that grocery stores are slashing prices. It’s not an irrelevant story — something one might expect to find on page three perhaps…

But no, there on page three is a story about ACORN: “ACORN to Review Incidents.” It’s tempting to dwell on that gripping and informative headline, but let’s dive on into the content.

Credit where it’s due, reporter Darryl Fears does mention the fact that ACORN workers attempted to aide and abet “underage sex workers.” This is a minor detail that much of the MSM, as they begin to cover this story, have willfully neglected to mention — The Daily Show being an outstanding (and hilarious) exception. Hey Jon, thanks for the outrage!

Mr. Fears goes on to provide “background” on James and Hannah:

“O’Keefe, a self-described filmmaker, and Giles, the eldest daughter of a conservative Christian minister in Miami, visited ACORN offices in the summer. An ACORN spokesman said they were turned away in Miami, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, where workers called police and filed a report. But workers welcomed them in the other cities.”

First of all, this reporter repeats the false and unsubstantiated claim from “an ACORN spokesman” that James and Hannah were turned away from multiple ACORN offices. (Let’s put this rumor to rest. Footage was obtained at every office they visited and you will see them all here on Big Government.) More disturbing is the reference to Hannah’s father and his profession.

And in case you missed it the first time, Mr. Fears repeats himself in the very next paragraph:

“Giles is a journalism novice who has written two columns for the conservative Web site Townhall.com. Her father, Doug Giles, serves as minister of the ultra-conservative ClashChurch near Miami, where he proclaimed that liberals “spit on the Word of God,” according to a report by the Miami New Times.”

No mention that Hannah attended the National Journalism Center in Washington, DC. Local angle, anyone? No, this reporter thought it was somehow more relevant to mention that her father conducts church services in Florida.

Pass the hand sanitizer, please.

As most of you outside of the MSM know by now, the House voted overwhelmingly last night to defund ACORN. And this vote, of course, came rapidly on the heels of a landslide vote in the Senate (83-7) to cut off federal funds to this organization.

Yet again there is no such headline on the front page of The Washington Post today. Nor will the reader find this headline on page 2 or 6…or 26. Instead Mr. Fears and Carol D. Leonnig present a puff piece about James and Hannah under the headline, “The $1300 Mission to Fell ACORN.” No mention of the House vote in this article, until you jump to page A16.

It seems that The Washington Post, once legendary for their commitment to investigative journalism, is demonstrating a bizarre new commitment to scrub the news from their newspaper.

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