The dumbest rationalization? “O’Keefe didn’t wear his [fanciful and exaggerated] pimp outfit into the actual neighborhoods where the ACORN offices were located”. Gosh, d’ya think? I’m told that Steven Colbert isn’t a real blowhard conservative pundit, either. And it’s just possible that “Gunga” Dan Rather didn’t do a great job of passing as a Muj, either:
Slightly less dumb: “O’Keefe edited his footage”. Well, doy. Everyone edits their footage. Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric edited their interviews with Sarah Palin – allegedly to present her in the least flattering light possible (we won’t know until ABC and CBS release the raw footage of their interviews – which, of course, they will not, although they’ve rarely been shy about doing so to buttress whatever credibility they may actually have). Did O’Keefe’s edits mislead anyone? Well, ACORN seemed confident enough in the credibility of the footage, edited or not, to fire pretty much everyone busted in the sting.
A little dumber: “O’Keefe’s footage only showed the ones that got caught!” Well, again, doyy. The media doesn’t care about “dog bites man” stories; its when the man bites the dog that ears perk up. How many ACORN officials fell for the sting? Half a dozen? If half a dozen GOP state chairpeople agreed with a cretinous proposal to spend taxpayer money on, say, polo ponies, do you think the mainstream media would dowse up a “climate of corruption” story or two?
The jury is still out on this next bit; is O’Keefe’s sting better or worse than this bit here, where Luke Hellier at Minnesota Democrats Exposed busted an Uptake “reporter” not only deliberately editing footage from the Capitol to create a story where none existed, actively misleading the public about the nature of an exchage between Rep. Mack and ..:
…but giggled about her ability to do it on Twitter?
Now, I’ve gone around a bit with the Uptake. On the one hand, most of the people involved in leading the group strive to present a clear and accurate, if not unbiased, representation of the news. On the other hand, they are committed to a “citizen journalism” model where virtually anyone can contribute, leading to some fairly ethically decrepit “reporting” (which the Uptake management, to their credit, have endeavored to fix).
The rationalization came from Charlie Quimby, who on the one hand writes/wrote for one lefty think tank or another and thus gets/has gotten some liveihood out of rationalizing the left’s behavior, but on the other hand is usually a fairly rational guy:
Kid needs supervision, like some other young videographers I could name
Now, I am not a news reporter – but I tried my hand at it, and never (allow me to brag a bit) lost a gig for breaching whatever passes for “ethics” in the business. Someone tell me again – did O’Keefe’s editing actually put words in peoples’ mouths they did not say? Did it imbue them with thoughts they did not think? Did it present a misleading impression of the ACORN employees’ malfeasance (that would have made firing them, as ACORN did, a mistake?)
Because it’d seem Ms. Maye did.
Where’s the equivalence?
And if the Uptake hires people (Ms. May was, according to Hellier’s copy and paste of Uptake’s posting on Ms. May, at the capitol more or less full-time), has the Uptake’s commitment to covering the news fairly and honestly passed its “sell by” date?
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