ACORN Sues Creators of Sting Video

(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»

Group called 'distraction' after sting catches employees advising prostitute

(NEWSER) - The US Census Bureau will not allow community-organizing group ACORN to participate in next year’s national census, the Wall Street Journal reports tonight. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is a “distraction,” Census director Robert Groves writes, after members of its Baltimore and Washington offices were caught on hidden cameras offering tax advice to people posing as pimps and prostitutes. More»

Hidden video subterfuge made news, but where was the reality check?

(NEWSER) - “You've got to give James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles credit for abundant chutzpah and guile,” writes James Rainey in the Los Angeles Times. The pair’s hidden camera ACORN takedown “likely will do for guerrilla video what Ashton Kutcher did for Twitter—popularize and expand the form.” But Giles and O’Keefe play by their own rules, he notes, leaving the media fumbling to respond to these newsworthy, but also bizarre and Comedy Central-worthy stings. More»

Second film shows staffers advising fake hooker, pimp

(NEWSER) - ACORN is weighing legal action after another undercover sting tape emerged, this time in Brooklyn, the New York Post reports. Like a tape made in Baltimore, the new footage shows a man and a woman dressed as a pimp and a prostitute getting advice on housing loans. “Honesty is not going to get you the house," says an ACORN staffer. "You can't say what you do for a living.” More»

Hidden camera catches employees advising phony pimp

(NEWSER) - The Baltimore office of ACORN has fired two staff members who were caught on tape giving advice to a man and a woman posing as a prostitute and a pimp, the Baltimore Sun reports. The video shows the staffers explaining how to evade tax laws, set up a brothel, and conceal underage girls brought in illegally from El Salvador. “If they don’t have Social Security numbers, you don’t have to worry about them,” one advises. More»