Media criticism of our ongoing and still unfolding ACORN story has been as bad as it has been funny and sad. The racket that is the mainstream media is coming to an end and exposed reporters and journalists, no longer feigning neutrality, have chosen to drive off the cliff, a la Thelma and Louise, in a customized ACORN convertible.
Professor and ACORN Adviser Peter Dreier
On Monday Christopher R. Martin and Peter Dreier wrote a commentary entitled “Have the Media ‘Falsely Framed’ ACORN?” for Editor & Publisher, “the authoritative journal covering all aspects of the North American newspaper industry, including business, newsroom, advertising, circulation, marketing, technology, online and syndicates.” E&P was once the bible of the newspaper and publishing business, but in recent years has moved hard left, hiding its ideological tilt under a patina of “scholarship.”
Martin and Dreier’s piece — while not framed as such — is an ideological defense of ACORN and an attack on those who have truthfully investigated and exposed the obviously troubled community organizing group. It’s basically, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men trying to put ACORN together again. But instead of attempting to rebuild the king, Martin and Dreier are trying to rebuild the media and the left elite, who use the poor and the downtrodden as their foot soldiers in order to maintain power in government, academia, the media and Hollywood. For them, ACORN provides the perfect photo-op.
Cultural leftists have controlled these domains for so long that they are now desperately trying to put down the insurrection of millions of millions of Americans who have finally figured out how the cultural left have controlled the narrative in a center right nation and put the vast middle class into a box.
“Professors” Martin and Dreier, who in September co-authored a defense of ACORN called “Manipulating the Public Agenda: Why ACORN Was in the News, and What the News Got Wrong” (you can download the report in .pdf format here or read about it here), provide a semblance of academic respectability as they trot out Media Matters talking points against ACORN’s critics. Predictably Media Matters, the Soros-funded, John Podesta-created protector of the left wing mainstream media order, played up Martin and Dreier’s piece.
There are no coincidences in Podesta’s world. In fact, taken together with its enthusiastic collaborators in the media, such as the habitually sneering Rachel Maddow, who’s obviously never met a Republican, a conservative or a sensible idea she likes, the Axis of ACORN continually lays down a covering fire while the “community organizers” scuttle about in the darkness:
At the end of the piece Professor Dreier offers the following biography: Peter Dreier, E.P Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy Program at Occidental College.
Why did Professor Dreier choose to leave out the critical information regarding his advisory relationship to ACORN? Isn’t sitting on an advisory committee of ACORN the definition of a conflict of interest in writing a fair and balanced piece on the organization? In fact, Dreier has been shilling for ACORN at least since 2003.
Now Editor & Publisher has repeated the same critical error — as it doles out advice on the niceties of proper journalism.
Back in September, when the Martin and Dreier study came out, I offered its writers a platform to act in real time as critics/ombudsmen of our ACORN “pimp and ho” story. They declined, preferring safe left-wing venues (Maddow, E&P) to propagate ACORN’s lies and to attack the messenger — all while failing to point out Dreier’s longtime relationship with ACORN on an advisory level. It makes you wonder whether they in fact care about the truth and transparency, or simply want to perpetuate the left wing axis of journalism and academia to perpetuate their hold on their jobs, power and the artificial belief that they are morally superior and care for the downtrodden more than the working masses. Here was Martin’s reply to my invitation:
Andrew,
Thanks for calling earlier today. Peter and I are going to decline your offer for a blog post on biggovernment.com. We’d rather have people see the entire study (which, for the record, was completed before the current ACORN story emerged, so it doesn’t address it directly).
We appreciate your interest in transparency, and you are welcome to carry a link to the whole report and share it with your readers.
You can download the 61-page report at http://www.uni.edu/martin/acornstudy.pdf
Best wishes,
Chris
Patrick Frey, also known as Patterico, an online L.A. Times criticism powerhouse, pointed out the Times’ ethical lapse the last time Dreier tried to defend ACORN back in October on the pages of the L.A. Times. They have yet to apologize or correct its glaring omission. Yet, Patterico successfully forced “the paper to correct an error” in Dreier’s previous attempts to attempt to rehabilitate ACORN’s reputation using media criticism as his vessel.
Isn’t it odd how MSM errors always go against their opponents on the political right?
In his Editor & Publisher piece Dreier also chose not to disclose that he co-authored an L.A. Times article with a “community organizer” who was featured on Big Government a few weeks ago admitting that ACORN is a deeply political organization that worked “under the grapevine” to get Obama elected.
Perhaps you remember the audio taken by Gary Hewson who confronted Alvivon “Bon Bon” Hurd at a rally in front of local Fox TV in Los Angeles (not Fox News) on November 13: “So the main thing what happened is when Obama ran we did a, we didn’t never say who we were going to run but it sort of undercover that we were going to put Obama in,” Hurd told Big Government’s Gary Hewson who was taping her at the public rally.
At the time we didn’t know who the chatty and refreshingly honest ACORN organizer was, but tips and a confirmation received Monday night show that she is a longtime left-wing community activist, and a voting precinct inspector who published an article in the L.A. Times with none other than… Peter Dreier. Shelter the Wealthy, Lock Out the Rest? Peter Dreier and Alvivon Hurd, March 26, 2001.
Dreier and Hurd are also CO-signatories on a LEFT-WING petition, “Planning for a Livable City: An Open Letter to the next Director of the Los Angeles Department of City Planning.
What a strange and small world the “vast left wing ACORN conspiracy” appears to be. I imagine ‘Bon Bon’ Hurd, Peter Dreier and Media Matter’s Eric Boehlert all huddled together in a sustainable Buckminister Fuller geodesic eco-dome as they conspire to attack Fox News and BigGovernment.com for exposing their long standing charade. But I digress.
Not only is Dreier pushing Media Matters talking points against the journalists who brought you the ACORN story, he’s also an ACORN advisor and a former writing collaborator of the woman who admitted in no uncertain terms that Hannah Giles, James O’Keefe and I are absolutely correct that ACORN lies when it claims to be a non-partisan organization. But then, we all knew that already, didn’t we?
Will E&P issue a correction for allowing Dreier to propagate another media criticism fraud after having been caught doing the exact same thing at the Los Angeles Times earlier this month?
Or is the mainstream media and the publications that cover it simply entering the end phase of their existence where they just don’t give a damn anymore?
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