Among the many glorious things about American journalism is that no credentialing organization or regulatory body stands between an individual who wants to break a story and his public reporting of it.The full story is at Slate.
In the old days, one significant barrier did deter aspiring reporters: If they couldn’t find a publisher for their piece or afford to self-publish, they were SOL. But now, thanks to the free-for-all environment created by the Web, those publication and distribution worries have evaporated. Anybody can be a journalist in the new regime, we’re told, and on some days, it seems as if everybody is.
Last week, thanks to the sponsorship of Andrew Breitbart’s new site BigGovernment.com, self-described activist filmmaker James O’Keefe, 25, and his colleague Hannah Giles, 20, brought national scrutiny to the progressive Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, with a series of guerilla videos that are one part 60 Minutes, two parts Punk’d, three parts Ali G, and four parts Michael Moore, all bubbling under a whipped topping of yellow journalism.
If you’re late to the story, Andrew Breitbart is a conservative author, columnist, Web entrepreneur, and Matt Drudge protégé. Lately, he has distributed a series of videos made by O’Keefe and Giles in which the duo visits various ACORN offices with a hidden camera, pretending to be a pimp and prostitute seeking advice on setting up a brothel. ACORN workers in Baltimore; Washington, D.C.; San Diego; San Bernardino, Calif; and Brooklyn, N.Y., took the bait, and now ACORN is on the run, firing underlings, making excuses, and responding to charges of mismanagement and fraud. On Capitol Hill, Congress is getting ready to defund the organization, which has taken in at least $53 million in federal money since 1994.
See my earlier essay, "ACORN, NEA, and Andrew Breitbart's PWNING of MSM."
Related: Sister Toldjah, "ACORN files suit against Breitbart.com (via Memeorandum). Also, Politico, "ACORN Files Suit Against Filmmakers."
Photo Credit: American Power, "Pasadena "May Day! May Day!" Anti-Socialism Rally."
He truly is a real journalist. I wish all of his associations could have gone as well as it did with those two young people.
ReplyDeleteI also hope that he is going to help fund their defense in the ACORN lawsuit that they are filing.
A monopoly has been broken. The elitists no longer control the news, at least for now.
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