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Memo to Snyder: Don’t stop the radical reforms now!Threatened: Why the Washington Post treats O’Keefe and Giles like suspects
September 18th, 2009 | 
Author: 
Dan Calabrese
Imagine this headline and lead appearing in any newspaper, save for the Washington Post, in 1972:
Post Reporters Deny Using Questionable Tactics to Entrap Nixon
The proposition seemed outlandish. Two Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, would accept information from a secret source who would only be known as “Deep Throat.” This information would be so damaging to president of the United States, it would unleash a scandal that would shake the foundations of the nation’s government to its core.
If only they'd had YouTube in 1972.
Woodward and Bernstein deny being beholden to left-wing interests, but admit taking advice in their reporting from left-wing editor Ben Bradlee. They insist that no left-wing organization bankrolled their reporting efforts.
Absurd? Of course. Not even the Republican National Committee would have attempted so shamelessly to turn the Watergate scandal into an indictment of Woodward and Bernstein themselves. And if anyone had, the Post would have screamed bloody murder.
Yet look what the very same Washington Post wrote on Friday about James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, the two independent journalists who exposed what appear to be highly illegal activities by the community organizing group ACORN:
O’Keefe insists that he and Giles’s work was done independently and rejects liberal suggestions that the videos were bankrolled by conservative organizations. He does, however, acknowledge receiving help and advice from a conservative columnist and Web entrepreneur.
Why, exactly, do O’Keefe and Giles now have to defend themselves and their independence, when the result of their work clearly speaks for itself?
Part of the issue is obviously ideological bias. The mainstream media is far less happy to see a left-wing organization exposed as a criminal fraud, especially one so closely connected to the left-wing president in which they have so much invested.
But there is more to it than that.
O’Keefe and Giles represent the kind of new reality that threatens the very existence of media dinosaurs like the Washington Post. These two individuals, ages 25 and 20, respectively, met on Facebook, got to talking about ACORN and decided to travel the country dressed as a pimp and a hooker, shoot some secret videos and – if they found anything good – post them on YouTube.
With the help of Andrew Brietbart and his burgeoning web site BigGovernment.com, the videos became an instant viral sensation. But with all due respect to Brietbart, who does excellent work and is a solid journalist in his own right, I wonder if his involvement was even necessary.
If O’Keefe and Giles had merely posted the videos on YouTube and e-mailed some of the leading conservative bloggers, they would have been just as big a sensation. That’s how information is spread these days, and that may be the even bigger reason their expose upsets the establishment media.
Woodward and Bernstein couldn’t have done in 1972 what O’Keefe and Giles did in 2009, not without the support structure of an establishment newspaper to distribute the information they gathered. For that reason, a scandal didn’t become a scandal unless major newspapers wanted it to be one.
The mainstream media were not interested in investigating ACORN for ideological reasons. Perhaps O’Keefe and Giles had ideological motives for being willing to do so. Regardless, what they found was legitimate – and huge – news. A national organization that receives a lot of federal money, and has historically had close ties to the president of the United States, is apparently aiding and abetting a wide array of criminal activity.
This threatens establishment newspapers because it presents them with any number of very serious problems. They can no longer bury a story by sitting on it, because two kids with a pimp coat, a car and a video camera are now perfectly capable of exposing it to the nation. Even worse, they can no longer hide the fact that they buried certain stories, because once someone does their job for them, they’ll have to explain why they didn’t do it.
And perhaps most ominously, incidents like this begin to raise questions about whether newspapers are really needed at all. Why do we have these institutions if they ignore important stories and leave it to a pair of rank amateurs to expose them?
The Post’s attempt to answer that question is implied in its story about O’Keefe and Giles. These two yokels, you see, are not trained journalists. Giles’s father is the pastor of a “radical church,” and they munched Subway and Quiznos in between sting operations. (Have you ever seen how professional journalists eat? And drink?)
Let newspapers die, it is implied, and we’ll be left with unprofessional hacks like these two. That might resonate if not for two facts: 1. O’Keefe and Giles did a pretty darn professional job exposing ACORN’s true nature. 2. It’s becoming pretty obvious that the Post and its peers cannot be bothered to do stories like this unless it suits their ideological agenda.
That’s why the Post treated O’Keefe and Giles as suspects in a way that no one would have dreamed doing to Woodward and Bernstein. The latter pair threatened to bring down the president of the United States – and ultimately did so. The former pair threaten to bring down the Fourth Estate, and it appears the Post knows all too well just how hard a fall that might prove to be.
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Posted in Dan Calabrese
109 Responses to “Threatened: Why the Washington Post treats O’Keefe and Giles like suspects”
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Very good article. Congratulations!
Good points!
You’re wrong, there is no ‘more’ to this than the fact that the two aren’t liberal. Do you think the Post would be so critical if they were liberals exposing some right-wing organization? Of course not.
You, sir, have a sharp and insightful mind. Thank you for you article.
I cannot stress your point enough. LET NEWSPAPERS DIE!
Don’t forget how beneficial it is for professional journalists to have the ability to expose (or NOT expose) the dishonesty of powerful people in government. That power can be traded for all sorts of perks and insider access, and insider access means raises and promotions, and fame, as long as thye know you know the rules and will play by them.
Once citizen journalists potentially have that power, your own value crumbles… unless, of course, you help those powerful people in government to discredit those citizen-journalists. This is the final narrow ledge the WAPO and others have arrived at.
ok, yeah, all this is true. but its akin to clinton sayng “the president is still relevent”. when he has to say it, its probably not so. and when wapo has to try to defend itself from the “new media”, its probably too late. and it is. the real story may soon be: “big sotry broken, not by wapo or NYT, and they dont report it, and noone even notices that they didnt cover it, becasue noone cares what they report anymore”. that ones coming soon.
For the first time in a very long time I am hopeful about the future of our country. After years of watching baseless lies being “reported” by the so-called main stream media I came to the conclusion that Americans were either dumb or simply didn’t care to know facts about what was going on in our country.
Hannah and James, just two young kids, bravely walked right into the criminal’s operations turned on the lights and exposed them as the roaches they truly are. All the while the “real” journalists buried the story or trash the messenger’s motives. In some cases even calling us racists.
Well thanks to Hannah and James we now have confirmed with facts not opinions that the media are in the tank for the lefties and they will even go as far as to outright lie to their readers to accomplish their goals of turning us all into good little commies.
Who do you believe, me or your lying eyes?
Let’s go to the videotape Jim!
Dan – another great piece. I posted a blog piece comparing O’keefe and Giles to Woodward and Bernstein last week in a slightly different context.
http://iam7545.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/mark-this-day-%e2%80%93-the-mainstream-media-is-officially-dead/
I agree with you that the WaPo and NYT will only use it’s investigative power when supporting their agenda leaving a huge void for journalists like Breibart, O’Keefe and Giles to fill.
The fact is that no liberal media outlets are reporting any important news on Obama leading to dismal ratings and readership figures. FOX News ratings are proof that people want to know.
Dan, bravo for another great article.
NOT JUST “BLAME THE MESSENGER”:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2009/09/21/breitbart-acorn-big-media-would-have-worked-kill-story-attack-okeefe-gil
I am now calling the entity formerly known as the mainstream media the “Irrelevant Media” now. This story not only shows about the corruption of ACORN but also shows the IM for what they truly are, a branch of the Democrat Party willing to ignore the biggest scandal since Watergate simply because it undermines their leftist agenda. As to Woodward and Bernstein if you think they didn’t have a lefty bias back in 1972 against Nixon then I’ve got some swampland in Florida to sell you. Giles and O’Keefe might be coming from a conservative wheelhouse but Woodward and Bernstein were coming from a liberal one. Back in 1972 we had no other outlets to get news except through the filter of the lefty media. Not anymore, thank goodness and I say the end of the Irrelevant Media cannot come too soon for me. Obama has plans to bail out the newspapers and I say hold his feet to the fire about that and tell him NO bailouts for a failing, lying business, namely Irrelevant Media.
Dan,
Have you read Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals?
Name the Reporters who wrote the hit piece.
Always make it personal. Name names. Never make the argument against policy or faceless organization.
Name names. Name the reporters.
Giles and O’Keefe uncovered Acorn’s support to child prostitution – still the liberal media couldn’t care less and prefer to uphold their ideological basis.
Some argue that Acorn does a lot of good. Yet, Acorn’s actions clearly aim at perpetuating misery and poverty. Logical in a way. For otherwise Acorn would destroy the very reason for its continued existence and for its continuous demands for larger funds.
Ahh, what has become of newspaper reporting once it became the realm of Professional Journalists with BJ degrees.
“If O’Keefe and Giles had merely posted the videos on YouTube and e-mailed some of the leading conservative bloggers, they would have been just as big a sensation.”
Dead wrong. Breitbart nursed the delivery of these stories for maximum impact. He was essential to the story’s success. Youtube would have been fun but a quick flameout.
The official news messenger is,.. shooting the nonofficial news messenger.
The sin is, exactly what it loks like, as this author suggests, they deviated from the leftwing party line and must be crushed accordingly. Look at who is attacking those kids, who is defending ACORN, it’s the same incestuous crowd of leftwing media politicians and support groups that told us in haughty indignation,..
no no no, fannie and freddie are FINE, you evil rightwingers are crazy to question their coming collapse.
That anyone would find the MSM credible on any issue these days, tells you how high the koolaid levels in their blood are right now. The left is lying, and they know it, they just don’t care as long as it’s not them being destroyed. The truth? The left gave up that charade decades ago, when they took the side of a party, over that of our country and people.
[...] North Star’s Don Calabrese imagines how rival newspapers may have reacted to the reporting of two certain journalists in the early [...]
[...] Calabrese of North Star National strikes again. This time he compares the old media’s coverage of Woodward & Bernstein and Watergate with their coverage of O’Keefe & Giles and the [...]
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