| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, September 18, 2009 | CONTACT Jess Levin (202) 772-8162 |
Washington, D.C. — Today, mere days after exposing Fox News’ reporting of a false ACORN story as fact, Media Matters for America called attention to new developments that raise further doubts about the right-wing campaign currently being waged against ACORN. A recently released video and police report show that ACORN officials in Philadelphia threw out filmmakers and called the police, directly contradicting the claims of conservative activists who made the widely circulated ACORN videos that the filmmakers were never rebuffed by any of the ACORN offices they visited.
“Every day brings more questions about the credibility of this story and Fox News’ reporting,” said Eric Burns, president of Media Matters. “Legitimate news outlets should thoroughly investigate these videos and the ‘citizen journalists’ who created them before reporting them as fact.”
BACKGROUND
In recent days, Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe, the conservative filmmakers who made the widely circulated ACORN videos, as well as BigGovernment.com’s Andrew Breitbart and Mike Flynn, who have been promoting the videos repeatedly on Fox News, have claimed that the filmmakers were never rebuffed by any of the ACORN offices they visited in their attempts to get ACORN to assist them in improper activities. However, in a newly released video, ACORN Housing Corp.’s Katherine Conway Russell directly rebuts those claims, citing a police report ACORN filed as evidence that she asked the filmmakers to leave the ACORN office in Philadelphia and called the police after the filmmakers asked suspicious questions.
Media Matters recently called attention to Fox News devoting significant programming to a video of Giles’ and O’Keefe’s interactions with an ACORN worker, who claimed she murdered her former husband and gave advice on how to run a brothel, but stated after the video was released that she had merely been attempting to “shock them as much as they were shocking me.” In running with the video, Fox News hosts frequently promoted the fake claim that the ACORN employee killed her former husband without fact-checking the allegation or indicating that they had contacted ACORN for a response. The employee’s supposed murder confession was soon debunked, a fact Fox failed to report on for almost a full day.
The Associated Press reported that Fox News spokeswoman Dana Klinghoffer said the tapes were vetted editorially before they were aired.
For more information, please see:
Police report filed by ACORN exposes false claims by individuals behind videos
Fox News runs with San Bernardino ACORN video without needed fact check
2 comments:
You shouldn't rely on Media Matters for anything. The Media Matters post you link to is chock full of demonstrable lies. It is contradicted by the ACORN video and the police report it cites as evidence, and the video and the police report contradict each other.
Let's start with the video of Katherine Conway Russell, which is the only account from any ACORN eyewitness to the incident. Media Matters states that it "directly rebuts" the filmmakers claim that they were never "kicked out" for their attempt to get ACORN to "assist them in nefarious activities." It does NOTHING of the sort. Ms. Russell did not say she "kicked them out" because they asked for help with a prostitution ring. Rather, she says that she told she had to go to a meeting and could therefore not answer any additional questions. The issue of prostitution did not even come up. They asked one question about getting papers for some girls for El Salvador, and she said because they were a counseling agency they couldn't help with that. But she didn't "kick them out" because of that or any other question -- she simply didn't have the time to talk.
Media Matters cites the police report as evidence that Russell asked them to leave, and that she "called the police after the filmmakers asked suspicious questions." Another lie. Russell didn't call the police while they were there, and in fact didn't call the police at all. Rather, after they had already left, she called an ACORN official to ask why they had been referred to her office.
It was then that the ACORN official, Keith Crosby, first contacted the police. He filed a false police report, apparently claiming an emergency because the filmmakers were "causing a verbal disturbance with employees of ACORN." But Crosby knew that the filmmakers had already left -- and the report notes that the police advised him of this fact he obviously knew -- and Russell never asserted there was a "verbal disturbance" even when they were there.
So the filmmakers never lied about anything. Media Matters lied, and ACORN committed a crime by filing a false police report.
Thanks for writing. Here is ACORN's statement:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-shea/despite-news-reports-acor_b_290265.html
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