I'd Hate to See Their Investment Advice
The editorial board at Investors Business Daily, last seen arguing that Steven Hawking would’ve survive under Britain’s medical system, today offer this ignorant, poorly reasoned editorial:
The New York Times, still smarting after losing scoops to Fox News, has thrown in the towel, vowing to avoid future embarrassment by monitoring the cable channel. We have a better idea — it’s called reporting.
An Illinois senator rises to the highest office in the land on pillars of a spectacularly slimy political organization, a group with a long record of voter fraud, theft, thuggery and partisanship. As sexy as such a story might seem, the New York Times didn’t consider it news.
That’s why the Times got scooped by outlets such as Fox News, for which it has nothing but contempt, on revelations that led to the fall of community organizing behemoth Acorn.
The wound was self-inflicted, rooted in little more than the partisanship of protecting a favored president. It left the field clear for a couple of journalism students to show that Acorn staffers openly encouraged pimping, child prostitution, human trafficking, mortgage fraud and tax evasion.
It’s right there on tapes posted to Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com. Unlike the disdainful Times, Fox ran with it, toppling a behemoth of political power.
Fox’s judgment now seems to play the role the Times’ once did, and the Times is no doubt left wondering how it could have lost out on yet another one.
The small picture error here is obvious: Fox News didn’t get the scoop on the story that brought down ACORN, filmmakers at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government got it — and they got the story about the hidden camera activists who baited ACORN employees into saying awful things because they were the ones who orchestrated, carried out and filmed the whole interaction. It would be a neat trick indeed if another news organization got the scoop on that story!
The big picture error is the notion that Fox News does more reporting than The New York Times. I am on record as criticizing the Times for ignoring the ACORN story, and I’ve no doubt that it wrongly ignores other stories too, sometimes due to ideological bias. But for heaven’s sake. Fox News produces so much less original reporting than the New York Times, and ignores so many more stories of national import, that only someone either actively mendacious or utterly clueless about the news media in America could assert otherwise.
I’ll have more on the general topic of The New York Times soon.
Conor:
Once again, you blather on about about nothing (i.e., another one of your pet peeves) in defense of “real” journalists who failed to do what they’re supposed to do. How about giving some real evidence that the editorial is, as you suggested, “ignorant,” and “poorly reasoned.” You show none in your post here. Your posts are getting tiresome in their constant ado about nothing much.
You still haven’t given any proof whatsoever that this story would have gone anywhere without Fox News or Glenn Beck. And please don’t tell us about your journalist friends who were “working on it.” That’s not proof.
I’m betting that the upshot of your upcoming NY Times post will be, wait for it…they do some good reporting, they do some bad, but at least they’re not Fox News.
Oh Well, the NY Times: We Report, You Decide Not to Read.
— jd · Sep 30, 11:49 AM · #
“How about giving some real evidence that the editorial is, as you suggested, “ignorant,” and “poorly reasoned.””
I’d say the fact that it treats the ACORN story as something other than a, real, embarassing but relatively minor political scandal is pretty good evidence of that.
Mike
— MBunge · Sep 30, 02:36 PM · #
The accusation isn’t that Fox did the investigative journalism on ACORN and NYT didn’t, it’s that once the story broke at biggovernment, Fox carried it days earlier than the NYT.
Arguably, that doesn’t mean Fox “scooped” the NYT, but they certainly beat the NYT to the punch.
The accusation from the right is that the NYT (and the LAT) tend to avoid stories that don’t fit their political preconceptions or that originate from the non-lefty side of the blogosphere, which means that their readers don’t find out about a bunch of stuff until after it happens. The accusation from the left is that the stuff that the NYT (and LAT) is not reporting is non-newsworthy.
— J Mann · Sep 30, 02:50 PM · #
If nobody reads the NY Times, why bother commenting? It’s a non-issue.
— tgb1000 · Sep 30, 02:57 PM · #
So an organization that the president USED TO WORK FOR and which (through a surrogate) was paid $800,000 by the president’s campaign is revealed to be more than willing to provide advice and expertise on how to cheat on taxes and fraudulently obtain a mortgage and is even willing to turn a blind eye to teenage girls smuggled from Central America and turned into sex slaves – and this, to you is embarassing but relatively minor.
Repeat – the POTUS used to work for this criminal organization and his campaign paid a surrogate of ACORN more than $800,000 in the last campaign.
You don’t think this is newsworthy?
— tomaig · Sep 30, 03:04 PM · #
“You don’t think this is newsworthy?”
Sure it’s newsworthy. It’s a minor scandal involving low-level corruption at an organization with ties to the Democratic Party and Barack Obama. It’s the perfect sort of story conservatives can point and laught about for a day or two and then, you know, move on to important stuff.
Is the fact that Obama was involved with ACORN years before any of those idiots were caught on camera relevant to anything? Unless you already assume that Obama is some sort of secret Muslim, Marxist, fascist who’s out to kill grandma…I don’t think it is.
Mike
— MBunge · Sep 30, 03:39 PM · #
Fox News is a blatantly biased news channel, on a level that exceeds any other major media outlet. TV news sucks in general (all flash and little substance), and Fox sucks most of all. Don’t watch that crap (any of it).
IBD is a wingnut publication, which is obvious from reading ANY of their editorials (the healthcare one with the Hawkings blooper was par for the course with these buffoons). I’d never heard of them until a few months ago. I read 1 or 2 of their articles (on Politico?) and noted them for what they are. I haven’t read them since. Why is anyone else?
— Rob in CT · Sep 30, 03:54 PM · #
Can you think of any other president whose ties – no matter how long ago – to a corrupt criminal enterprise like ACORN you would consider “minor”?
You keep repeating that it’s a minor thing but last time I checked, both the House and Senate had passed bills outlawing any more federal dollars going to ACORN.
This is not something they normally do for such minor, low-level scandals, is it?
— tomaig · Sep 30, 04:01 PM · #
“Can you think of any other president whose ties – no matter how long ago – to a corrupt criminal enterprise like ACORN you would consider “minor”?
You keep repeating that it’s a minor thing but last time I checked, both the House and Senate had passed bills outlawing any more federal dollars going to ACORN.
This is not something they normally do for such minor, low-level scandals, is it?”
1. Just because some people in an organization do bad things or break the law, that doesn’t automatically make it a “corrupt criminal enterprise”. By that standard, virtually ever major business would be a “corrupt criminal enterprise”.
2. I think Obama’s connection to ACORN is about as significant as George W. Bush’s old drunk driving incident. If this ACORN stuff had broken before the election, there certainly would have been a bigger frenzy but it also would have been just as wrong.
3. Yes, politicians never do anything silly in the aftermath of a scandal, do they?
Mike
— MBunge · Sep 30, 04:16 PM · #
The problem is that an administration gets a few passes which the faithful can cover up or dimiss as anamolies, but when an administration has connections to numerous questionable people and organizations, the excuses and rationalizations become ludicrous. The same goes for Fox — if it had been one story they ran before others, it would be no big deal, but when Fox is consistently presenting news which the other major news sources aren’t covering, then it becomes something else. And it really doesn’t matter where the news orginates, the chain of events are leading to Fox coverage, so they must have better connections and sources to gather news that’s unique in the MSM — this puts them in a superior position, and their ratings reflect this.
— mike farmer · Sep 30, 04:31 PM · #
“when Fox is consistently presenting news which the other major news sources aren’t covering, then it becomes something else.”
Yes, and in the case of Fox that “something else” would be propaganda. By the way, do you wonder why that Holocaust museum shooter story was almost entirely ignored by both the Hannity and O’Reilly shows on the very day it happened?
Mike
— MBunge · Sep 30, 04:38 PM · #
You Obamaphobes need to come up with better dirt. It’s got to be really sensational. Lets look at what hasn’t workedwith the msot recent past presidents: Accusations of rape and murder (plus real sexual harrassement and adultery)—Clinton. Military desertion, drunk driving, drug addiction—Bush II. If rape, murder, sexual harrasment, adultary, desertion, drug addiction, and drunk driving won’t work, how is “ties” to a few controversial figures, past employment with a corrupt charity organization and alleged foreign birth going to do the job?
What if you accused him of being gay?
— cw · Sep 30, 04:58 PM · #
“Yes, and in the case of Fox that “something else” would be propaganda. By the way, do you wonder why that Holocaust museum shooter story was almost entirely ignored by both the Hannity and O’Reilly shows on the very day it happened?”
If you can prove it was ignored by Fox News, then you have a point, but i don’t think it was ignored — I will be happy for you to prove me wrong.
— mike farmer · Sep 30, 05:14 PM · #
“What if you accused him of being gay?”
Is this any kind of question for a member of the elite, high brow, intelligentsia to be asking?
Are you suggesting Obama is gay? Call Fox!
— mike farmer · Sep 30, 05:20 PM · #
I’m still waiting for a discussion of the issue of ethics: how far should bloggers and other journalists go in discovering wrong-doing? Should MSM use false pretenses to get news? Is it okay for non-MSM types, or do we expect Fox News to adopt these tactics? Could MSM writers have obtained the same story within their existing guidelines? If not, does the end justify the means?
— Bill Harshaw · Sep 30, 06:05 PM · #
“I’m still waiting for a discussion of the issue of ethics:”
Well, what do you think? Was it unethical or not? I see nothing wrong with pretending and taping. It’s not like capturing what happens and what’s said changes anything about the nature of what happened or what was said. If someone taped me giving real estate advice, as long as the advice breaks no laws, what difference does it make — I don’t believe like some primitive people that it has captured my soul.
And if I have given advice that advises unlawful behavior, then they could simply report that to authorities or present a video as evidence. The nature of my violation is the same.
— mike farmer · Sep 30, 06:29 PM · #
“If you can prove it was ignored by Fox News, then you have a point, but i don’t think it was ignored”
I was watching Fox the day the day the Holocaust Museum shooting happened. It occured several hours before either Hannity or O’Reilly went on the air. It was the lead news story for every other channel and show. O’Reilly made a two sentence reference to the event while discussing another subject and Hannity didn’t mention it at all during his entire show. The day someone walks into the Holocaust Museum and tries to conduct a murder spree, Sean Hannity couldn’t find time to say one single word about it. If you want to talk about ignoring stories, that seems like a far more egregious incident than the NYT and ACORN.
Mike
— MBunge · Sep 30, 06:43 PM · #
Sean Hannity is not Fox News, but good try — I know that you watching Hannity is very credible evidence, but I’m afraid it’s not enough.
— mike farmer · Sep 30, 10:07 PM · #
I guess I don’t understand why James O’Keefe and his girlfriend get a pass on pretending to be a pimp and a hooker – which is as equally unethical as giving fraudulent tax advice, you’d think – but when the ACORN staffer pretends to believe them and play along, that’s somehow beyond the pale.
The difference is that the ACORN staffer is on the tape, outside of the context that makes it obvious she was joking, and O’Keefe isn’t on the tape at all except as a voice. So, yes, capturing what was said – and only some of what was seen – does appear to change the nature of what was said.
— Chet · Sep 30, 11:09 PM · #
“Sean Hannity is not Fox News”
Let me ask you a question. Do you think Hannity would have completely ignored the story if it had been a Muslim or an Arab dude in the Holocaust museum shooting? I hope you’ve got enough guts to honestly answer the question.
Mike
— MBunge · Oct 1, 02:31 PM · #