How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Originally story, from WSJ Online:
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Call Fox'
How come Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart keep scooping the New York Times?
By JAMES TARANTO
Last week we noted that Jill Abramson, managing editor of the New York Times, had acknowledged her paper was "a beat behind" on the story of Van Jones, the Obama administration's so-called green-jobs czar, who among other things once signed a 9/11 "truther" conspiracy petition. Times readers did not learn about Jones until he had already become the Obama administration's former so-called green-jobs czar. Abramson pointed out that long before the Times reported the story, "it had been discussed on talk radio, Fox News and other venues."
Our conclusion: "If you want to get the news ahead of the Times, watch Fox News Channel."
On Friday, Fox delivered on Abramson's promise by scooping the Times again. Early that evening, the network sent an email alert: "Census Bureau severs all ties with ACORN after hidden-camera videos expose 4 of group's workers advising 'pimp,' 'prostitute' on subverting the law." (Here's the full story.) The Obama administration had invited Acorn (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to "partner" with the bureau as "advocates for census cooperation and participation," as the bureau described it in its Dear John letter.
Readers of Saturday's Times got only a short (225-word) report from the Associated Press, which began: "The Census Bureau on Friday severed its ties with Acorn, a community organization that Republicans have accused of voter-registration fraud." It made no mention of the hidden-camera sting--although that was because of the Times's editing. The original AP dispatch, filed contemporaneously with the Fox alert, was twice as long. Among the material the Times cut was this:
ACORN fired two employees who were seen on hidden-camera video giving tax advice to a man posing as a pimp and a woman who pretended to be a prostitute. Fox News Channel broadcast excerpts from the video on Thursday. On the video, a man and woman visiting ACORN's Baltimore office asked about buying a house and how to account on tax forms for the woman's income. An ACORN employee advised the woman to list her occupation as "performance artist."
Those two employees had worked in Baltimore (the other two were in Washington), and a story in Friday's Baltimore Sun reported that the investigators purportedly planned to traffic in child sex slaves:
The video depicts a man and a scantily dressed female partner visiting the Charles Village office of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, where they appear to ask two employees about how to shield their work from state and federal tax requirements. The supposed pimp also appears to ask the employees how to conceal underage girls from El Salvador brought into the country illegally to work for him.
"If they don't have Social Security numbers, you don't have to worry about them," the employee says.
The Sun noted that the exposé, by 20-year-old Hannah Giles and 25-year-old James O'Keefe, was published on BigGovernment.com, a conservative Web site run by Andrew Breitbart, before being aired on Glenn Beck's Fox program.
It was a busy week for Beck and Breitbart. On Friday they claimed another victory when, as FoxNews.com reported, the National Endowment for the Arts announced that it was "reassigning" Yosi Sergant, its communications director. On his Sept. 1 program, Beck had aired portions of a tape from an August conference call with artists, in which Sergant exhorted them to push the administration's agenda. The call was first reported on Big Hollywood, another Breitbart site, by a participant, Patrick Courrielche, who provided Beck the tape on which Sergant said this:
I would encourage you to pick something, whether it's health care, education, the environment. There's four key areas that the corporation has identified as the areas of service. Then my task would be to apply your artistic, creativity community's utilities and bring them to the table.
Sergant also told the artists: "We are just now learning how to really bring this community together to speak with the government, what that looks like legally. . . . We are participating in history as it's being made. So bear with us as we learn the language so that we can speak to each other safely and we can really work together [to] move the needle and to get stuff done."
Here is a reprint in full of the Times's coverage of the Sergant story: .
It's difficult to imagine that a Republican administration could employ an exponent of a crackpot conspiracy theory, "partner" with an apparently corrupt organization, or attempt to politicize an agency like the NEA without the mainstream media treating it as a major scandal. But with Obama in the White House? A quote attributed to the fired Washington Acorn employees sums things up nicely. The AP reported that they had advised Giles and O'Keefe that they "must be low-key about the business, or people could 'call Fox' "--not the New York Times, or CBS or NBC, or "the media," but Fox.
To be sure, Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart are advocacy journalists with distinct points of view. But the supposedly impartial mainstream media also claim to have an "adversary" relationship with the government. That they have left this field to a few upstarts suggests that they have a point of view, too--one that is, in the age of Obama, far more compliant than adversarial.
So, for those of us keeping score... On 3 separate occassions in the past 2 weeks, Fox News has aired breaking news that the New York Times and other so-called "main stream media outlets" refused to cover:
1) The dismissal of Van Jones and his close association with 9-11Truth.org
2) The admittedly sting-driven exposure of 3 ACORN offices offering advice on how to run child prostitution rings and defraud the IRS (the White House has since severed ties with ACORN on the 2010 census, that's the one detail the MSM did propagate).
3) The communications director for the NEA pushing artists to promote the Obama agenda in their artistic work.
So, I'm curious... is the Backroom going to claim that all 3 of these stories are fraudulent? Or that somehow they're not newsworthy? Or are you willing to admit that perhaps, the MSM is a bit too close to the Obama administration, and has shifted from the traditional adverserial relationship the Fourth Estate is supposed to have with government to something more of a volunteer propaganda wing by pushing favorable stories and quelling unfavorable ones?
And before you all start with the kneejerk reactions, I don't watch FoxNews, let alone Glenn Beck. I'm a CNBC/FoxBiz/Bloomberg/WSJ guy myself.
09-14-2009, 18:25
Jolt
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
What can I say? Obama is truly the Anti-Christ. Hitler reborn, no doubt. :yes:
09-14-2009, 18:36
Subotan
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
If you're looking for a news channel that's not part of the "Mainstream Media", try the BBC, or better yet, Al Jazeera.
09-14-2009, 18:37
Lemur
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Corleone
So, I'm curious... is the Backroom going to claim that all 3 of these stories are fraudulent? Or that somehow they're not newsworthy?
I would say that you're picking three exclusive stories and declaring that they are proof positive that the MSM is (a) incompetent , (b) in the tank for the Antichrist, or (c) hopelessly partisan.
It's not exactly scientific. Maybe you could round up all of the political exclusives posted/printed during the past 12 months and weight them for pro/anti-Obamessiah bias, weight them again for reach/size of outlet, and come up with some sort of graph that might tell us something interesting.
09-14-2009, 20:18
Sasaki Kojiro
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Quote:
Or are you willing to admit that perhaps, the MSM is a bit too close to the Obama administration, and has shifted from the traditional adverserial relationship the Fourth Estate is supposed to have with government to something more of a volunteer propaganda wing by pushing favorable stories and quelling unfavorable ones?
That seems true to me. I don't know how "traditional" having an adversarial relationship is though, it seems more like something they traditionally claim to have.
09-14-2009, 20:23
Adrian II
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Corleone
[..] theNew York Times and other so-called "main stream media outlets" refused to cover: 1) The dismissal of Van Jones and his close association with 9-11Truth.org
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Corleone
Or are you willing to admit that perhaps, the MSM is a bit too close to the Obama administration, and has shifted from the traditional adverserial relationship the Fourth Estate is supposed to have with government to something more of a volunteer propaganda wing by pushing favorable stories and quelling unfavorable ones?
This. However, much the same was true with the previous administration before it became blatantly obvious that Bush was wearing no clothes. The whole dynamic of White House reporting is out of whack, too many pressers worried about their access instead of the facts. If they had been doing their jobs in 2002 we wouldn't be in the situation we're in today.
Beck may be scooping the old schoolers, but he is still a complete tool. And I heard some rumor that he raped and killed a girl a while back. :inquisitive:
09-14-2009, 20:51
Don Corleone
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Those of you who are arguing it's a question of media cozying to gain access, not a particular administration affinity probably have more of the right of it I think. I think there are preferences, and I think there is a bias, but I agree, the bias about getting first tier press credentials goes volumes beyond any D vs. R pettiness.
I think a more interesting study wouldn't be the one Lemur suggested, but a study of how much better independent bloggers did on reporting on the Bush adminsitration as opposed to supposedly partisan sources, like the NY Times yet again.
I know Ken Tarranto meant this as a "See, they are Democrat hacks", but I took it rather differently. In all the talk about traditional media outlets failing, if all they exist for the purpose of existing, is there any value there to be saved?
09-14-2009, 21:28
drone
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Corleone
I know Ken Tarranto meant this as a "See, they are Democrat hacks", but I took it rather differently. In all the talk about traditional media outlets failing, if all they exist for the purpose of existing, is there any value there to be saved?
If all we get from the WH press corps is pap spoon-fed to them from the administration spinners, then no. This is more dangerous than if they were just incompetent. Being the willing broadcasters of White House propaganda is not their job.
Cozying up to administration officials has it's perks in DC. Invites to events and dinners ring up all sorts of alarms regarding conflict of interest. The WaPo seems to have gone down this path lately, I no longer trust much aside from the obits and the funny pages at this point.
09-14-2009, 22:50
Tribesman
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Wow two topics on the same subject by the same poster , and both appear to be complete bollox.
09-15-2009, 00:08
Papewaio
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
We are getting what we voted for*. As always source news from multiple locations. Now if one is 'right-wing' the other 'left-wing' and they agree on something than the news might be accurate.
I do think there has been a decline in investigative reporting, and one of the easiest ways to suppress press is to put their snouts in the same trough. Martyrs are too discordant to make for good ad copy, and at the end of the day news is treated as entertainment.
*Voted for in the sense of which stream of media we choose.
09-15-2009, 01:28
Xiahou
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows.
Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate.
09-15-2009, 01:55
Lemur
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xiahou
\none of those results I looked at mention his being a truther outside of a blog posting.
Surprise: So it was not until recently that some of Mr. Jones’s past actions received broad airing, including his derogatory statements about Republicans in February and his signature on a 2004 letter suggesting that former President George W. Bush might have knowingly allowed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to occur in order to use them as a “pre-text to war.”
Surprise 2: The adviser, Van Jones, a controversial and charismatic community organizer and “green jobs” advocate from the San Francisco Bay Area, signed a petition in 2004 questioning whether the Bush administration had allowed the terrorist attacks of September 2001 to provide a pretext for war in the Middle East.
Surprise 3: Jones resigned over the Labor Day weekend as President Obama's special adviser for "green jobs, enterprise and innovation," after reports linked him to efforts several years ago suggesting a U.S. government role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Oh, look at that, every news article in Adrian's NYT link mentions the truther letter.
09-15-2009, 02:25
Xiahou
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemur
Oh, look at that, every news article in Adrian's NYT link mentions the truther letter.
Ah, I was searching for the word "truth". :oops:
09-15-2009, 03:25
Beskar
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Why is being a truther a bad thing? Since what they wanted was an independent investigation on a few facts that didn't make sense.
09-15-2009, 03:52
Lemur
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beskar
Why is being a truther a bad thing? Since what they wanted was an independent investigation on a few facts that didn't make sense.
Politically, being a truther is suicide. Also, please note that the "few facts that don't make sense" about 9/11 are about as legitimate as the few facts that don't make sense about President Obama's birth certificate.
Stare at any set of facts long enough and you can start to see problems. But the 9/11 commission did a very thorough job, and there just aren't many unanswered questions about the attacks anymore.
09-15-2009, 03:54
Tribesman
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Quote:
Ah, I was searching for the word "truth".
Thats funny , its just like the last bollox topic on the same subject where a person did a search for specific words and came up with no results and somehow deduced that their search proved something when a simple glance at the media outlet would have shown them all they needed to know which was that they was wrong.
What is a really big surprise is that there is a journalist working for one person that is singing the praises of other journalists working for the same person about their amazing ability to repeat what other journalists working for the same person have written....and that some people actually see it as news rather than News Corp just advertising itself in its own publications.
I bet they go really crazy about the absolutely fantastic book reviews the papers carry about the books their own company publishes too:dizzy2:
Theres a sucker born every minute ain't there:laugh4::laugh4::laugh4::laugh4:
09-15-2009, 04:54
Papewaio
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
1) I want your news links/google fu Tribes.
2) Respect. Play nicely. Otherwise those bollocks you keep talking about might make contact with something. :smash:
09-15-2009, 11:46
Adrian II
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xiahou
Uh, none of those are posted until after his resignation
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
So many suprises, it just like Christmas
09-15-2009, 13:10
Adrian II
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tribesman
So many suprises, it just like Christmas
Another funny thing is that the NYT or ABC or whatever medium right-wingers dont like are called 'main stream' or 'corporate' media'. For crying out loud, Fox is owned by Rupert Murdochs News Corporation and broadcast into 85 million American homes.
How is that non-corporate or not main stream? :laugh4:
09-15-2009, 13:10
Gregoshi
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Now Glenn Beck is beating up old ladies?!!
:clown:
09-15-2009, 14:46
Adrian II
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gregoshi
Now Glenn Beck is beating up old ladies?!!
:clown:
It's just a rumour..
09-15-2009, 15:44
Strike For The South
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
The big thing to me is the ACRON scandal. Prostitution is one thing, importing 13 year old El Salvadorians is another but to have 3 different agencies in three different cities aide such behavior is criminal and they should have there tax dollars taken away.
It has nothing to do with Obama or any of that. There corrupt, therefore they should get there money taken
(And before someone comes in in with the smart-azz "BuT aLl PoLoTiCs iS TeH cOrRuPt" These guys got found out. If you have a sneaking suspicion about someone go do what these guys did.)
09-15-2009, 16:08
Lemur
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Strike For The South
The big thing to me is the ACRON scandal. [...] they should have there tax dollars taken away.
The Senate voted on Monday to forbid Acorn, the antipoverty group frequently criticized by conservatives, from receiving federal housing grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The vote is the latest jolt of bad news for the group, formally known as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The Census Bureau told Acorn last week that it no longer wanted the group’s assistance for the 2010 census, while a hidden camera recently caught Acorn employees giving tax advice to people who said they wanted to run a brothel.
The provision, which passed 83-7, was introduced as an amendment to a housing and transportation spending bill by Senator Mike Johanns, Republican of Nebraska, who said on the Senate floor that Acorn had received $53 million in federal funds since 1994.
09-15-2009, 16:11
Strike For The South
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
The Senate voted on Monday to forbid Acorn, the antipoverty group frequently criticized by conservatives, from receiving federal housing grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The vote is the latest jolt of bad news for the group, formally known as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The Census Bureau told Acorn last week that it no longer wanted the group’s assistance for the 2010 census, while a hidden camera recently caught Acorn employees giving tax advice to people who said they wanted to run a brothel.
The provision, which passed 83-7, was introduced as an amendment to a housing and transportation spending bill by Senator Mike Johanns, Republican of Nebraska, who said on the Senate floor that Acorn had received $53 million in federal funds since 1994.
Yay, something constructive happend, Yay
09-15-2009, 18:56
Beskar
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemur
Politically, being a truther is suicide.
Why so? Why would a group of people just wanting a independent review a bad thing?
09-15-2009, 19:04
Lemur
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beskar
Why so? Why would a group of people just wanting a independent review a bad thing?
The attacks of 9/11 already had an independent review, and it was pretty darn thorough. The folks who claim that 9/11 was some sort of inside job are much the same as the people who declare that there's something "wrong" with the moon landings, or the birthers who claim that President Obama is an Indonesian Muslim.
Now, an elected official might be able to hold nutty views and still hold on to power, so long as he or she has a base of support. But these "czars" are unelected advisers who hold no executive power, so they're vulnerable, and being shown to associate with a loony fringe element is a death sentence.
Does that sorta explain it?
09-15-2009, 19:13
Gregoshi
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemur
Now, an elected official might be able to hold nutty views...
"nutty"...ACORN. I get it!! :laugh4:
09-15-2009, 20:41
drone
Re: How Glenn Beck is beating the snot out of "The Old Grey Lady"
