A new study covering the journalism of the recent scandals regarding ACORN blames right-wing media blogs and conservatives for stirring up controversy about the community organizing group during last year’s presidential campaign and the first months of the Obama administration.
The study, “Manipulating the Public Agenda: Why Acorn Was in the News, and What the News Got Wrong,” says a well-orchestrated, anti-ACORN blitz appeared in October 2008, reports Barb Barrett.
It continued in a “conservative media echo chamber” through the following months, say the authors, Peter Dreier, director of the Urban & Environmental Policy Program at Occidental College; and Christopher R. Martin, a journalism professor at the University of Northern Iowa.
They report that firms created front groups, such as the Consumer Rights League and the Employment Policies Institute, to attack ACORN on battles against predatory lending and in favor of “living wage” laws.
More after the jump.
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The report singles out the Wall Street Journal as one of the “veteran opponents” of ACORN.
Such opinion leaders set the story up as long ago as 2006, the report says. It also blames the mainstream media for failing to fact-check claims.
“(T)he mainstream media reported its allegations without investigating their truth or falsity,” the report reads. “As a result, the relatively littleknown community organization became the subject of a major news story in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, to the point where 82% of the respondents in an October 2008 national survey reported they had heard about ACORN.”
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Re: A "conservative media echo chamber"
GB = I post 4 times and then claim I am "too busy" to respond to substantive argument. Logical consistency isn't your thing is it?
Also, McCain did better among those with HS degrees, some college, and college degrees, than he did those without.
Bush won all 3 categories. Both Kerry and Obama won those without H.S. diplomas.
But clearly it is all Republicans who are uneducated. But then facts and partisan rhetoric rarely coincide.