Washington Times Seems To Make Up Racism Charge In Its ACORN Story

Like Media Matters for America, I too was puzzled by the accusation that ACORN representative Bertha Lewis charges of racism against individuals critical of the group. Note the headline from the Washington Times below, as captured by MMA: “ACORN’s Lewis suggests opponents are racist.” So, when I see such an explosive headline, my first reaction is … “I can’t wait to see the mountain of evidence the reporter and newspaper have compiled to substantiate such a powerful charge. But, as you might expect, I was woefully disappointed by an article absent of the necessary information to support its unsubstantiated header.

Below is The Washington Times article as posted by Media Matters:

ACORN’s Bertha Lewis charged Tuesday that accusations about the embattled community organizing group are racist, alleging that a coordinated political effort started by former Bush adviser Karl Rove sought to stop the group from registering minority voters.

“For many years, there’ve been folks who’ve disagreed with our ideology or methodology that [have] gone after us,” Mrs. Lewis, ACORN’s chief executive officer, said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington.

“I mean we, [going back] to 2004, we now see through e-mails from Karl Rove from the previous administration that ACORN itself was targeted, targeted to go after us so that we would stop doing voter registration because it was said that we were moving too many minorities to vote, changing the power dynamics on the local election and that we needed to be stopped.”

She also labeled as racist the infamous videos that show ACORN workers advising a man and young woman posing as pimp and prostitute how to circumvent the law. “These new filmmakers, [James] O’Keefe himself, told The Washington Post, ‘They’re registering too many minorities; they usually vote Democratic; somebody’s got to stop them,’” Mrs. Lewis said.

But Mrs. Lewis did not mention that The Post was forced to issue a later correction on the story, saying the quote attributed to Mr. O’Keefe was inaccurate.

But, as Media Matters points out, it’s difficult to see the evidence in the story that supports the headline.

Now, I know what people are going to say … the Washington Times is basing its misleading (if not inaccurate) headline on her comment about some opposition being troubled by the registration of “too many minorities.” But, the explosiveness of the headline does not match the thin (damn-near invisible) evidence supplied by The Washington Times.

This newspaper saw a book of matches on a table and immediately screamed “FIRE!” Notice the paper ignored the political angle that was in the same sentence it latched onto for the headline.

The paper’s supporting facts are weak next to the headline’s charge in what appears to be an example of poor and blatantly-biased journalism.