ACORN Sting Raises Media Ethics Questions

Says it proves ACORN lied about incident

(NEWSER) - The ACORN stingers have released another video, this time of their visit to the Philadelphia location—where, ACORN has until now insisted, they were kicked out. In the new, edited video, James O’Keefe says they weren’t kicked out, but instead sat for more than half an hour with an office employee, who gave them her business card and scheduled a future meeting. More»

Bertha Lewis not contrite enough for Dana Milbank

(NEWSER) - ACORN chief Bertha Lewis wasn’t in the mood to apologize at the National Press Club yesterday. For anything. Not for the internal ACORN review showing that $5 million had been embezzled from the group, rather than the previously alleged $1 million (“This is speculation, completely false”), not the voter registrations allegedly filled out for Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck (“an utter fabrication”), and certainly not for the “highly edited” pimp and prostitute tapes. More»

(NEWSER) - Andrew Breitbart may have an ideological ax to grind, but so what? The undercover ACORN videos he's posted illustrate a significant strength of 21st-century American journalism, writes Jack Shafer: "It will accept contributions from everybody from amateurs to entertainers (I'm looking at you, Jon Stewart) to gadflies to billionaires to activists to students to genocidal tyrants." Breitbart's right-wing slant doesn't taint the work. More»

Recordings made without two-party consent, group says

(AP) - ACORN is suing the makers of a hidden-camera video that showed employees of its Baltimore office giving tax advice to a man and woman posing as a pimp and prostitute. The liberal group contends that the audio portion of the video was obtained illegally because Maryland requires two-party consent to create sound recordings. More»

The actions of a half-dozen employees doesn't represent the huge organization

(NEWSER) - The conservative campaign against ACORN—which has now, thanks to a few video “sting” operations, lost its federal funding—is built on an outrageous set of exaggerations and falsehoods, writes Joe Conason for Salon. “No doubt it was fun to dupe a few morons into providing tax advice to a ‘pimp and ho,’ but what ACORN actually does, every day, is help struggling families.” More»