Quote:
Originally Posted by Professor S
There is one majory difference between comparing the ACORN and 9/12 issues, not that I agree with many 9/12'ers on many of their assertions or their methods.
ACORN takes public money. 9/12'ers don't.
As for those that threw them out, you don't get credit for doing what you're obviouly supposed to do. Now if the filmmaker were asked if anyone threw them out and they said no, then I think we could question their integrity, but the story is in the gross misconduct not whether or not some people behaved properly. I will agree that the journalist should have volunteered that some offices did not help them, but it should have beenno more than a disclosure.
The fact that it happened once is bad enough and should have been major news across the board, much less multiple times in several offices in several cities. I know that CNN and other places are covering it now, but thats because they are at the point they had to. It took them days to cover any of it, so I give them little to no credit.
EDIT: I found the ACORN artile on CNN... at the bottom after scrolling for a bit, and it concentrates on new training for employees, which I hope is a good thing and they really follo through on the promise.
Add to that how Van Jones was never really looked into, and they spent more time covering the fact he called Republicans "assholes" than the fact that he is a 9/11 truther and at least formerly a communist. Once again, both of these things are legitimate news items regardless of idealogy and they were largely ignored until immedacy forced their recognition.
I give credit to NPR for carrying it, and I never include them in my thoughts on journalistic corruption. They might be one of the last remaining bastions of journalistic integrity.
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Fair assertions methinks. And you're right, I didn't hear anything about it on CNN.com until today (though it was in their top headlines when I checked earlier), while I heard it on NPR I believe either Monday or Tuesday this week. I almost never check any other news sources so I can't say for them.
I didn't know that the ACORN problems happened in multiple cities until today. I don't condone it whatsoever, and as NPR said in their piece the employees were immediately fired and more training is being done which I hope helps. While not exactly an excuse, it also sounds like ACORN is run mostly by volunteers so I wouldn't expect all of them to know immediately what to do in such situations without some formal training.
But the point I was making about only showing the bad examples is, what if they did 300 videos and then only five of them were bad examples? Certainly that makes it seem like just a few bad apples and not a systemic problem. I mean, in any organization you can't expect perfection. On the other hand, if they did 10 videos and five of them were bad examples, that would be a systemic problem. The numbers ought to be disclosed.
EDIT: Because of how you worded your reply, I'm not sure you were clear on what I meant. I wasn't trying to compare the 9/12 and ACORN issues, just the videos about them.