A few days ago I noted that the Times had once again stated as fact that James O’Keefe had posed as a pimp when he visited Acorn offices during his infamous “sting”. I pointed out that that “fact”, along with many of the other “facts” stated about this event have long since been disproven.
Today, the Times issued a correction (and no, I am not claiming it is response to my post), which merely compounds the error:
Several articles since September about the troubles of the community organizing group Acorn referred incorrectly or imprecisely to one aspect of videotaped encounters between Acorn workers and two conservative activists that contributed to the group’s problems.
In the encounters, the activists posed as a prostitute and a pimp and discussed prostitution with the workers. But while footage shot away from the offices shows one activist, James O’Keefe, in a flamboyant pimp costume, there is no indication that he was wearing the costume while talking to the Acorn workers.
The errors occurred in articles on Sept. 16 and Sept. 19, 2009, and on Jan. 31 of this year. Because of an editing error, the mistake was repeated in an article in some copies on Saturday. (Go to Article)
The fact is, that as I stated in my previous post, O’Keefe never posed as a pimp, at least not while he was with the Acorn people. You can read Acorn’s own analysis here (and I think you’ll find it convincing) as well as the independent report of Scott Harshberger, here, where he states:
The videographers represented that they needed help and had been turned down elsewhere, and that Ms. Giles was a dancer and Mr. O’Keefe was a college student trying to help her. Although Mr. O’Keefe appeared in all videos dressed as a pimp, in fact, when he appeared at each and every office, he was dressed like a college student – in slacks and a button down shirt. Ms. Giles, however, was dressed as she appears in the videos.
The report, by the way, notes that more often than not, the Acorn employees saw through the act. Giles did sometimes claim to be a prostitute trying to get away from an abusive pimp, so I won’t even take issue with the fact that the media always reports the “sting” as her posing as a prostitute, but there appears to be no evidence that either she or O’Keefe ever claimed that he was a pimp.
All the Times did in its correction was correct an assertion that wasn’t even made in the article in question-that O’Keefe was dressed like a 1970s era pimp stereotype. Is it so hard to point out that their entire story is at best unproven, and, given the weight of the evidence, false?
I don’t know why this situation particularly offends my battered sensibilities. Perhaps it’s the utter failure of the Democrats to rise to the defense of an organization that served their constituency, combined with the mob mentality displayed by the media in accepting the word of an obvious dick as gospel But those are everyday occurrences, so they really don’t explain it. Still, I find the whole thing singularly offensive.
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