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It's Up to You, New York: 'BradCast' 3/21/24
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GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
VA GOP VOTER REG FRAUDSTER OFF HOOK
Felony charges dropped against VA Republican caught trashing voter registrations before last year's election. Did GOP AG, Prosecutor conflicts of interest play role?...

Criminal GOP Voter Registration Fraud Probe Expanding in VA
State investigators widening criminal probe of man arrested destroying registration forms, said now looking at violations of law by Nathan Sproul's RNC-hired firm...

DOJ PROBE SOUGHT AFTER VA ARREST
Arrest of RNC/Sproul man caught destroying registration forms brings official calls for wider criminal probe from compromised VA AG Cuccinelli and U.S. AG Holder...

Arrest in VA: GOP Voter Reg Scandal Widens
'RNC official' charged on 13 counts, for allegely trashing voter registration forms in a dumpster, worked for Romney consultant, 'fired' GOP operative Nathan Sproul...

ALL TOGETHER: ROVE, SPROUL, KOCHS, RNC
His Super-PAC, his voter registration (fraud) firm & their 'Americans for Prosperity' are all based out of same top RNC legal office in Virginia...

LATimes: RNC's 'Fired' Sproul Working for Repubs in 'as Many as 30 States'
So much for the RNC's 'zero tolerance' policy, as discredited Republican registration fraud operative still hiring for dozens of GOP 'Get Out The Vote' campaigns...

'Fired' Sproul Group 'Cloned', Still Working for Republicans in At Least 10 States
The other companies of Romney's GOP operative Nathan Sproul, at center of Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, still at it; Congressional Dems seek answers...

FINALLY: FOX ON GOP REG FRAUD SCANDAL
The belated and begrudging coverage by Fox' Eric Shawn includes two different video reports featuring an interview with The BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman...

COLORADO FOLLOWS FLORIDA WITH GOP CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
Repub Sec. of State Gessler ignores expanding GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, rants about evidence-free 'Dem Voter Fraud' at Tea Party event...

CRIMINAL PROBE LAUNCHED INTO GOP VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL IN FL
FL Dept. of Law Enforcement confirms 'enough evidence to warrant full-blown investigation'; Election officials told fraudulent forms 'may become evidence in court'...

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Another visit on Thom Hartmann's Big Picture with new news on several developing Election Integrity stories...

CAUGHT ON TAPE: COORDINATED NATIONWIDE GOP VOTER REG SCAM
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CRIMINAL ELECTION FRAUD COMPLAINT FILED AGAINST GOP 'FRAUD' FIRM
Scandal spreads to 11 FL counties, other states; RNC, Romney try to contain damage, split from GOP operative...

RICK SCOTT GETS ROLLED IN GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) sends blistering letter to Gov. Rick Scott (R) demanding bi-partisan reg fraud probe in FL; Slams 'shocking and hypocritical' silence, lack of action...

VIDEO: Brad Breaks GOP Reg Fraud Scandal on Hartmann TV
Breaking coverage as the RNC fires their Romney-tied voter registration firm, Strategic Allied Consulting...

RNC FIRES NATIONAL VOTER REGISTRATION FIRM FOR FRAUD
After FL & NC GOP fire Romney-tied group, RNC does same; Dead people found reg'd as new voters; RNC paid firm over $3m over 2 months in 5 battleground states...

EXCLUSIVE: Intvw w/ FL Official Who First Discovered GOP Reg Fraud
After fraudulent registration forms from Romney-tied GOP firm found in Palm Beach, Election Supe says state's 'fraud'-obsessed top election official failed to return call...

GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD FOUND IN FL
State GOP fires Romney-tied registration firm after fraudulent forms found in Palm Beach; Firm hired 'at request of RNC' in FL, NC, VA, NV & CO...
The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...


Wingnut superstar's recent column 'edits truth to meet agenda'...
By Brad Friedman on 3/7/2010 5:03pm PT  

Given her own history of documented voter fraud felonies, you'd think Ann Coulter would want to stay away from the whole ACORN issue (particularly since there is no evidence that, unlike her, they've ever committed any).

But Coulter just can't help herself, I guess, as evidenced by her column last week, dutifully reprinted by "Andrew Breitbart Presents...Big Journalism" in the wake of the Brooklyn D.A.'s finding of "no criminality" seen in the Brooklyn ACORN "pimp" hoax videos, and even Rupert Murdoch's own New York Post reporting the videos as a "'heavily edited' splice job" with "seemingly crime-encouraging answers...taken out of context so as to appear more sinister."

So what did Coulter do to shore up the wingnut hoax that is falling apart faster than Andrew Breitbart himself? She quoted some "seemingly crime-encouraging answers" from the video, "out of context so as to appear more sinister," naturally. And, even more naturally, those folks who have been played and conned by "Andrew Breitbart Presents...Big Journalism" and "Andrew Breitbart Presents...Big Government," etc., ate it all up...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Deceptive rightwing propagandists become national joke...
By Brad Friedman on 3/5/2010 10:12am PT  

Earlier this week, the Brooklyn D.A. concluded a five-month investigation of the Brooklyn ACORN videos, finding "no criminality." Following the release of the findings, Rupert Murdoch's own New York Post, of all places, reported it this way:

ACORN set up by vidiots: DA

The video that unleashed a firestorm of criticism on the activist group ACORN was a "heavily edited" splice job that only made it appear as though the organization's workers were advising a pimp and prostitute on how to get a mortgage, sources said yesterday.
...
Many of the seemingly crime-encouraging answers were taken out of context so as to appear more sinister, sources said.

Using similar language, the New York Daily News reported a law enforcement source as noting: "They edited the tape to meet their agenda."

The New York Times, the so-called "paper of record," while reporting that the DA found no criminality, offered no such coverage of the DA's office explaining that the videos were deceptively and misleading edited and promoted as if they revealed something they actually didn't. The language used by Times reporter Andy Newman even appears to defy the paper's own Public Editor Clark Hoyt's recommendation --- as he shared it with me via email personally --- to "avoid language that says or suggests that O'Keefe was dressed as a pimp when he captured the ACORN employees on camera." (More specific details on that in my post from yesterday.)

In the meantime, as the Times continues to fail, last night Stephen Colbert mocked the entire ACORN "pimp" hoax as we've been revealing it over the last several weeks and, along with it, James O'Keefe, Andrew Breitbart, Fox "News" --- and, yes, indirectly, the New York Times --- by sharing his own "exclusive," damning, and heavily-edited video interview...

Related: Yesterday ACORN launched a campaign to fight back and "Demand Accountability" from the Times and the other media outlets that have grotesquely misreported this story and have still failed to correct their damagingly inaccurate coverage. More on that campaign and how you can add your voice to it, right here...

* * *

The BRAD BLOG covers your electoral system fiercely and independently, like no other media outlet in the nation. Please support our work with a donation to help us keep going (Snail mail, more options here). If you like, we'll send you some great, award-winning election integrity documentary films in return! Details right here...




Group asks '100,000 supporters' for 'Letters to Editor'
Cites BRAD BLOG coverage of NYTimes Editors' outrageous justifications for refusing to retract repeated misreporting...
By Brad Friedman on 3/4/2010 3:51pm PT  

Following on our weeks-long coverage here at The BRAD BLOG, and at other sites who've similarly jumped in demanding accountability from the New York Times, ACORN itself is now launching a "Letter to the Editor" campaign to "Demand Accountability" from the paper for their repeated misreporting of the James O'Keefe/Andrew Breitbart ACORN "pimp" hoax.

An email blast is being sent to "over 100,000 ACORN supporters" today, according to spokesman Kevin Whelan, calling on them to "send an email to the Times' Public Editor and tell him to retract the Times' erroneous reporting about O'Keefe and ACORN."

The community group's heavily-footnoted email blast, signed by "CEO and Chief Organizer" Bertha Lewis, quotes several articles from The BRAD BLOG's detailed coverage, including NYTimes Public Editor Clark Hoyt's outrageous emailed justifications for refusing to recommend the paper correct its multiple misreports.

"Can you tell Clark Hoyt, The New York Times' Public Editor, that The Times needs to retract its past ACORN stories and report the truth about the anti-ACORN sting operation from now on?" the email campaign asks [emphasis in original] before chiding Hoyt for refusal to "see that a correction is in order, because that would require conclusive evidence that The Times was wrong, which I haven't seen."

The BRAD BLOG, however, has indeed shown "conclusive evidence" to Hoyt that the paper was wrong, and even Hannah Giles (who played the fake prostitute) and even Andrew Breitbart (who published the videos to help launch his new BigGovernment.com website) have both now admitted that the reports of James O'Keefe dressing as a "pimp" in the offices of ACORN were flat out wrong.

Whelan says the group is "asking people to contact either the New York Times OR their local paper and ask for a correction to the erroneous reporting regarding O'Keefe and his video scams."

"Bradblog and a handful of online writers have been way ahead in looking at the facts on this story," Whelan wrote, "just as you were in exposing the great voter fraud fraud in 2006." (Our indexed coverage of that particular Rightwing fraud campaign is here.)

More from Whelan's email to The BRAD BLOG:

We are asking people to contact papers all around the country because nearly everyone has reported on this story erroneously at some point-O'Keefe's purpose after all, was to deceive and confuse. The New York Times has a special responsibility to correct the facts though-both as the paper of record and because they reported based on a combination of wild misconceptions (as they admitted to you) and pressure from the radical right.

The ACORN email blast to supporters also notes that the New York Daily News had the decency to report on a law enforcement source who noted Monday that "they edited the tape to meet their agenda," following the conclusion of the Brooklyn D.A.'s finding of "no criminality" after a five-month investigation of Brooklyn ACORN tapes.

Moreover, even Rupert Murdoch's New York Post reported on the finding, noting the D.A. described the video as a "'heavily edited' splice job" where "many of the seemingly crime-encouraging answers were taken out of context so as to appear more sinister."

And yet, the New York Times, the "paper of record," continues to misreport the story, even in the wake of the D.A.'s finding, as we detailed last night.

Please read ACORN's full letter, and sign onto their accountability campaign right here...

And please spread the word by DIGGing, REDDITing, RE-TWEETing, etc!

* * *

The BRAD BLOG covers your electoral system fiercely and independently, like no other media outlet in the nation. Please support our work with a donation to help us keep going (Snail mail, more options here). If you like, we'll send you some great, award-winning election integrity documentary films in return! Details right here...




And the New York Times is STILL helping them do so...
By Brad Friedman on 3/3/2010 6:12pm PT  

It's not particularly worth my time, or anybody's time (unless they are involved in suing or pressing charges against the GOP hoaxsters), to get into the detailed weeds on how the ACORN "pimp" hoax videos were doctored to show something other than what they really were, in comparison to what the text transcripts (which may or may not be accurate) actually show, since:

  • the entire scam was a political hit job and a scam from the jump, and;
  • since accused felon James O'Keefe and his employer and publisher Andrew Breitbart have refused to release the unedited video tapes, and;
  • since three investigations (one from the Congressional Research Service, one from MA's former Attorney General, and the latest, just this week from the Brooklyn, NY District Attorney) have all found no criminal wrongdoing by the low-level ACORN employees caught on secret video, and;
  • since nobody but low-level workers and volunteers are even seen on the tapes, and;
  • since ACORN immediately fired those who violated the organization's own written protocols.

As The BRAD BLOG has been detailing over the last several weeks, the highly-edited, heavily-overdubbed, secretly (and likely illegally) taped videos, and those who published them, have already proven to have discredited themselves.

Now that O'Keefe's ACORN "pimp" hoax has been acknowledged, even by Andrew Breitbart, as a deceptive fraud --- where he once called it Pulitzer Prize-worthy "journalism" he now compares it to Borat --- it doesn't seem to matter to the same rightwing bloggers who trumpeted it in the first place that O'Keefe lied about playing his now-infamous 70's-era blaxploitation "pimp" character in ACORN offices. What's important, those foolish enough to keep backing O'Keefe and Breitbart now claim, is not that the purveyor of the information has been shown to be a fraud himself, but what he purports to have caught ACORN workers saying and doing on his highly-edited video productions.

But even those charges don't hold up to even the quickest scrutiny...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




By Brad Friedman on 3/2/2010 3:24pm PT  

This from a panel of today's Tom Tomorrow strip, titled "Too Much Crazy," depicting New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt "as a weasel"...

Much more crazy in the full strip.

The quote in the above panel is taken from the mindblowing emails Hoyt sent to me recently, as one of his reasons for not recommending the "paper of record" issue retractions for their repeatedly inaccurate and misreported coverage of the James O'Keefe/Andrew Breitbart ACORN video "pimp" hoax, as The BRAD BLOG has now been covering for weeks.

In addition to the absurd justifications that Hoyt (who can be emailed at Public@NYTimes.com) offered for refusing to responsibly recommend corrections, the paper's Senior Editor for Standards, Greg Brock, offered equally absurd reasons for standing by their reporting earlier, including O'Keefe's appearance on Fox News, "wearing what HE said was the same exact costume he wore to ACORN's offices."

"If there is a correction to be made, it seems it would start with Mr. O'Keefe himself. We believe him," Brock (who can be emailed at SeniorEditor@NYTimes.com) incredibly asserted via emails we posted here. "Therefore there is nothing for us to correct."

* * *

The BRAD BLOG covers your electoral system fiercely and independently, like no other media outlet in the nation. Please support our work with a donation to help us keep going (Snail mail, more options here). If you like, we'll send you some great, award-winning election integrity documentary films in return! Details right here...




NYDailyNews law enforcement source: 'They edited the tape to meet their agenda'
[UPDATED] Rupert Murdoch's NYPost: DA source says tapes 'heavily edited'...
By Brad Friedman on 3/1/2010 1:27pm PT  

Via Ben Smith at Politico:

ACORN cleared in Brooklyn: 'No criminality'

Kings County, New York District Attorney Joe Hynes put out a statement just now:

On Sept. 15, 2009, my office began an investigation into possible criminality on the part of three ACORN employees. The three had been secretly videotaped by two people posing as a pimp and prostitute, who came to ACORN’S Brooklyn office, seeking advice about how to purchase a house with money generated by their ‘business.’ The ‘couple’ later made the recording public. That investigation is now concluded and no criminality has been found.

The New York Daily News adds:

This comes as local ACORNs around the country - including here in New York - have been shuttered and relaunched. The operation in the city is now known as New York Communities for Change.

Well, what a stunner. Still no retraction from you, New York Times? Will you even bother to report this news this time, after failing to report thatformer MA Attorney General Scott Harshbarger found the same [PDF] months ago, as did the Congressional Research Service, even as you continued mis-reporting the ACORN "pimp" hoax ever since?

UPDATE: This new post from the NY Daily News seems to indicate the D.A. was able to look at the complete unedited video which Breitbart and O'Keefe have otherwise refused to release publicly (see our Exclusive Video of Breitbart discussing this from earlier today) and found, according to "a law enforcement source", as we've long argued: "They edited the tape to meet their agenda"!...

Brooklyn prosecutors on Monday cleared ACORN of criminal wrongdoing after a four-month probe that began when undercover conservative activists filmed workers giving what appeared to be illegal advice on how to hide money.

While the video by James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles seemed to show three ACORN workers advising a prostitute how to hide ill-gotten gains, the unedited version was not as clear, according to a law enforcement source.

"They edited the tape to meet their agenda," said the source.

UPDATE 3:24PM ACORN issues a statement following the announcement from the King County, D.A. noting what The BRAD BLOG has been reporting for years:

O'Keefe and the Fox attack machine targeted ACORN because of our successful work to empower hundreds of thousands of low and moderate families as voters and active citizens.

Observers who looked closely at the filmmakers' own transcripts have already noted that O'Keefe presented low level employees with a bogus scenario in which he presented himself as a boyfriend trying to rescue a prostitute from a violent pimp. Although no employees took any actual action to file papers for loans or taxes, ACORN already conducted its own review in order to move forward serving our communities.

Hopefully today's announcement, and similar results from independent reviews, will make politicians and media examine the facts more carefully the next time a valuable community organization is attacked.

Their full statement follows below...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




On-the-record answers at CPAC, that the corporate media couldn't be bothered to get themselves before misreporting the story
'It's like Borat ... Why would it be misleading?'...
By Mike Stark on 3/1/2010 7:00am PT  

- Guest Blogged by Mike Stark of StarkReports.com

I recently attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in D.C., with video camera in hand, to report on the attendees. I was particularly interested in interviewing James O'Keefe, the miscreant (and accused felon) responsible for the ACORN video media hoax that The BRAD BLOG has been meticulously detailing for several weeks, including the important focus on how the mainstream corporate media (the old-media) have been had by the scam.

O'Keefe's phony "pimp" story has been debunked, but, as Brad Friedman has shown, the old-media remain remarkably reticent to admit their errors, and the publisher of the videos, O'Keefe's employer and promoter Andrew Breitbart, has been unwilling to help them off the hook. Witness the outrageous email responses from the NYTimes' Senior Editor for Standards Greg Brock and then from their Public Editor Clark Hoyt, when it was shown to them that "the paper of record" had been had --- that O'Keefe had never "visited Acorn offices...dressed so outlandishly" in the now-infamous "pimp" costume as the paper had reported, as O'Keefe had represented, and as Breitbart himself had claimed in his own column, to the public.

While I didn't get the chance to speak with O'Keefe, I did catch up with his partner in fraud, Hannah Giles. Alas, she was surrounded by a protective coterie and fled without answering any questions when one of her entourage recognized me.

But then my luck turned. I trekked to the basement to cover the "XPAC" party and found myself standing shoulder to shoulder with Breitbart, O'Keefe's promoter, publisher, and employer, and owner of the website which launched the infamously damaging, misleading, deceptive, and highly doctored video tapes. I had previously questioned Breitbart at a press conference at the National Press Club press last October. He's had a pretty easy ride of it since then, facing questioning only from a largely adulatory press.

Though old-media, as Brad has shown, have been remarkably reluctant to demand answers to hard questions from Breitbart --- or any of the players involved in the ACORN secret video scheme --- I felt it important to do so for a number of reasons. The results were revealing, both in Breitbart's insanely manic demeanor, and in the substantive content of his answers to my questions.

Ultimately, as I believe you'll find in the video, he reveals a lot about his own editorial judgment, professionalism, and reliability --- none of it is good...

* * *

The Breitbart/O'Keefe media fraud has been wildly successful for the pair, helping to launch Breitbart's BigGovernment.com site late last year. But, unfortunately, it's hurt a great number of innocents.

Lost in the outrage against the New York Times for having fallen for the scam without bothering to fact-check, as The BRAD BLOG has been detailing for the past several weeks, is the fact that Breitbart and his ward O'Keefe have accomplished a despicable goal: They've all but destroyed an organization committed to helping those Americans most in need. Real people --- thousands of children amongst them --- will suffer hardship as a direct consequence of Breitbart's and O'Keefe's mendacious and malicious hoax, and singularly partisan political agenda. When will the media get around to telling that story?

And what of the damage that disreputable propagandists like Breitbart and O'Keefe bring to the real citizen journalists in the new media --- those of us striving not to sell a political agenda under false pretenses, but, rather, hoping to document facts, truth, and on-the-record positions of those who would corrupt our system through disingenuousness, self-enrichment, and lies?...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Media Matters notes Exec Editor Bill Keller's response to errors in 2005: 'It's amazing that some at this paper believe fact-checking is someone else's responsibility'...
By Brad Friedman on 2/26/2010 3:48pm PT  

The 'rave reviews' just keep pouring in for the massive fails by New York Times Senior Editor for Standards Greg Brock and Public Editor (what they call their ombudsman) Clark Hoyt to recommend corrections for the repeated misreporting of the ACORN video "pimp" hoax.

At least one of them is absolutely devastating in highlighting both the extraordinary hypocrisy and sheer stupidity demonstrated by the "paper of record" in refusing to set the record straight on its incontrovertibly inaccurate coverage of the false "pimp" story peddled by rightwing propagandists last year...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




PLUS: Blistering blogosphere reaction for Hoyt's refusal to recommend corrections from 'paper of record'
ALSO: Online petition launched, calling for retractions...
By Brad Friedman on 2/24/2010 2:56pm PT  

After not hearing from New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt for nearly a week --- during which I'd sent him more and more indisputable evidence that Andrew Breitbart employee James O'Keefe never played his infamous "pimp" character in the offices of ACORN --- he responded with a couple of blistering charges. The email was sent several hours after we'd published our article yesterday, detailing his various untenable justifications for not recommending retractions by the "paper of record" for multiple undeniably fallacious articles on O'Keefe and Breitbart's discredited hoax ACORN "pimp" videos.

Hoyt equated our use of offering independently verifiable and incontrovertible hard evidence, demonstrating the Times, their Senior Editor for Standards Greg Brock, and Hoyt himself were simply wrong, time and again, in falling for the rightwing hoax, and my attempt at seeing accountability for it, with a "political agenda" on par with the Rightwing propagandists who ran the dishonest partisan smear campaign to destroy ACORN.

The fall-out in the blogosphere has been quickly broadening since The BRAD BLOG's exclusive yesterday. Responses from a number of influential blogs and bloggers include a call for Hoyt to step down as the paper's ombudsman, a blistering description of this particular rationalization of his [emphasis Hoyt's]...

The story says O’Keefe dressed up as a pimp and trained his hidden camera on Acorn counselors. It does not say he did those two things at the same time

...as "unforgivable," and the charge that "the paper allowed its desire to seem 'fair' to the right trump its commitment to being fair to the facts." Also, an online petition calling for NYTimes retractions was just launched. (More details and fall-out below.)

Hoyt wrote back in response to the "Last Chance" note I'd sent him on Monday, offering a final opportunity to re-consider his previous assessments, in which he'd found that no correction was in order for the paper, "because that would require conclusive evidence that The Times was wrong, which I haven't seen"...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Despite repeated confirmation that the 'paper of record' was wrong, Clark Hoyt declines to recommend retractions
Describes O'Keefe as 'journalistically unethical,' but recommends only that editors avoid 'dressed as pimp' language in future coverage...
By Brad Friedman on 2/23/2010 5:35am PT  

The New York Times' independent Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, after sending me an email originally standing by the paper's misreporting of the James O'Keefe ACORN 'pimp' story, now describes the rightwing activist's misrepresentation of his highly-edited and heavily-overdubbed hit videos as "journalistically unethical."

O'Keefe's deceptive editing of those infamous tapes implied that he had presented himself in ACORN offices as a 70's-era blaxploitation "pimp." It was the eye-popping, media-friendly, marquee headline that news outlets, including the Times, latched onto and ate up. Except that it never happened. The tapes were purposely manipulated in order to give the appearance that ACORN workers were so dumb they didn't even recognize that skinny little white kid as a phony pimp. And that's exactly how O'Keefe, and his employer Andrew Breitbart who published the misleading tapes on his websites, wanted them to be perceived.

We've spent the last several weeks here reporting and demonstrating how the O'Keefe/Breitbart ACORN video hoax was exactly that --- a political partisan scam that was publicized uncritically by the New York Times, and dozens of otherwise reputable outlets.

Despite the Times' repeatedly misreporting that O'Keefe was dressed or posed as a "pimp" while meeting with ACORN employees in those videos, and even after being shown in no uncertain terms that he did not, the Times' Public Editor has declined to recommend the paper retract its reporting on this story. The coverage at the "paper of record" undoubtedly helped lead to Congressional passage of federal legislation attempting to defund the community organization, and helped to bring on a subsequently crippling decline in other funding sources for the non-profit group which serves to provide support for low- and middle-income American families.

At the end of the remarkable email exchange between Hoyt and myself (published in full at the end of this article), he says he recommended only that "Times editors ...avoid language that says or suggests that O'Keefe was dressed as a pimp when he captured the ACORN employees on camera."

That, even though...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Confuses 'minstrel show' with 'menstrual cycle'
Plus Digby, and others, on why all of this matters...
By Brad Friedman on 2/22/2010 3:06pm PT  

Hannah Giles played the "prostitute" in the highly-edited, heavily-overdubbed, secretly-taped ACORN sting videos, while James O'Keefe played her college student, aspiring politician boyfriend trying to save her from abuse at the hands of a dangerous pimp. She seems very nice

Unfortunately, she's also the same person who joined --- likely horribly disinformed --- in to the GOP's anti-ACORN junta (attacking, for purely partisan political reasons, those who help the least fortunate in our society), and then explained afterwards that "one day I was jogging after work and I saw an ACORN, um, I was like, hmm, you know, I’ve never seen them before, I don’t like them."

So when, in this Max Blumenthal video compilation of his weekend with the loons at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), she seems to confuse "minstrel show" with "menstrual cycle," I guess it shouldn't be much of a surprise. As she did with Washington Independent's David Weigel last week, she also, again, confirms that O'Keefe never wore his "pimp" costume into ACORN offices, despite the lies from propagandist Andrew Breitbart (employer of both Giles and O'Keefe, and publisher of the videos) about that point and others when he sold his original blockbuster, but fake, story to the public and one media outlet after another who bought it all hook, line and uncritical sinker...


As the "paper of record" the New York Times has still refused to correct their multiple, blatant misreports of this story, which helped lead to Congress passing unconstitutional legislation to defund ACORN, and with the reported news today that the national community group has been structurally broken by the loss of funds in the wake of the disreputable partisan hit job, the points that Digby made yesterday, as to why she believes the O'Keefe/Breitbart lie is an important one, are worth noting...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Tells confused listeners: 'I have to apologize to the nation'
Goes on to spend weekend lashing out at Vast Leftwing Conspiracy in various paranoid rants, as NYTimes still supports his hoax...
By Brad Friedman on 2/21/2010 4:13pm PT  

Just a quick reminder that none of The BRAD BLOG's recent series of detailed reporting on the MSM's failure to properly report on the ACORN "pimp" video hoaxes is actually about Andrew Breitbart, in truth. He'd love it to be. But it's not. He's just one overly-influential cancer cell in the quickly metastasizing illness over-taking the mainstream media. That illness is best illustrated, of late, by the willingness of the once-credible New York Times (and many others) to treat Andy --- as well as his band of GOP propaganda mongers and dirty tricksters --- as a respectable source, rather than the confirmed liar, desperate flip-flopper, self-defining hypocrite, and Republican con-man that he is.

But since the "Liberal MSM" are not yet ready to cop to their egregious and repeated errors on that front, and since we're feeling generous today for some reason, we'll just take Andy at his tweeted word from last week when he sputtered: "@TheBradBlog U do understand that if I were least bit worried about your line of questioning Id ignore U, right? Do U not get that?"

Yeah, we get that. Which must be why, during his series of insane, paranoid, meltdown rants (see videos below) at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in D.C. all weekend long, where he fingered an imaginary Vast Leftwing Conspiracy at the heart of his epic fail, he forgot to mention The BRAD BLOG for some reason!

It's as if he were entirely "ignoring" our "line of questioning" for some reason.

That, even as he was forced to admit at the very top of his Saturday morning speech at CPAC --- undoubtedly due to having finally been sold out by his own fake "prostitute," Hannah Giles, the day before --- that he did, "apparently," lie about his phony ACORN "pimp" story...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Woman who posed as prostitute confirms repeated misreporting by NYTimes, many others
Why does 'paper of record' still refuse to retract, apologize?...
By Brad Friedman on 2/19/2010 1:14pm PT  

Speaking to Washington Independent reporter David Weigel today at CPAC, Hannah Giles, who posed as a prostitute in James O'Keefe and Andrew Breitbart's infamous, highly-doctored, heavily-overdubbed, secretly-taped, ACORN hit videos, confirms what we've been reporting for several weeks here: O'Keefe never dressed as a pimp in the offices of ACORN.

Reports Weigel today [emphasis added]:

I asked Giles about a criticism that’s often been leveled against them — that they hyped up the video by wearing outrageous clothes in promotional materials and the videos’ introductions that they didn’t wear in the actual stings.

“We never claimed that he went in with a pimp costume,” said Giles. “That was b-roll. It was purely b-roll. He was a pimp, I was a prostitute, and we were walking in front of government buildings to show how the government was whoring out the American people.”

"B-roll" refers to footage shot separately and later inserted during editing, as frequently seen in movies and television. E.g., an overhead helicopter shot of Las Vegas, used to establish where the scene takes place, before cutting to the interior of a casino where the main character is seen playing cards at a table.

Giles' admission is in stark contrast to:


Greg Brock, the New York Times Senior Editor for Standards, as we documented exclusively some weeks ago, is even on email record as citing that Fox "News" appearance by O'Keefe (embedded again at right) as his only evidence to "stand by our reporting" in which the "paper of record" has, time and again, misreprested O'Keefe as having "visited Acorn offices ... dressed so outlandishly that he might have been playing in a risque high school play."

Just two days after the Times described the "outlandish" dress of O'Keefe, the Congress of the United States passed legislation to remove federal funding for ACORN. (A federal judge later found the legislation to be "unconstitutional".)...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Falsely asserted O'Keefe 'dressed as pimp' while 'asking for, getting help for illegal activities'; Still stands behind fabricated claim
Media Matters details mainstream outlets that took bait, fell for Breitbart/O'Keefe's sensationalized fiction...
By Brad Friedman on 2/17/2010 5:46pm PT  

As mentioned yesterday, on Monday night, wingnut propagandist Andrew Breitbart tweeted to me...

andrewbreitbart | @TheBradBlog U can lie that i lied until youre blue in face. ive told truth every step of way. U are propagandist. keep repeating the lies.

...in reply to The BRAD BLOG's recent series of articles highlighting, among other things, how he lied, along with his accused federal felon employee James O'Keefe, in order to sell their phony ACORN hit videos to gullible media --- and how the New York Times, and so many others, fell for it hook, line, and not-yet-retracted sinker.

But, as it turns out, evidence from Breitbart's own Sept. 21, 2009 Washington Times column reveals that Breitbart did, in fact, not tell the "truth every step of way." In fact, he out and out lied while selling O'Keefe's all together phony misrepresentation (some might call it a lie) that he "dressed as a pimp" while "asking for - and getting - help for various illegal activities," as Breitbart inaccurately reported in his column.

Breitbart's promotion of those videos, as published on his own BigGovernment.com website, with the spectacular, media-friendly marquee selling point of low-level ACORN workers so stupid that they couldn't even spot a skinny white kid as a phony "pimp," kick-started the sting video campaign that was built and sold on an utter lie.

More evidence has been published today at Media Matters highlighting the effectiveness of that lie, and how media outlets from one side of the country to the other --- not just the New York Times as we've shown --- were utterly bamboozled and played for chumps by Breitbart and O'Keefe's phony scheme.

Furthermore, when confronted with the lies --- yes, lies --- in his column, while on the air live last night, Breitbart chose to do what he always does...lie about them...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




By Brad Friedman on 2/15/2010 2:44pm PT  

Press release, as issued today, by media/election/corruption watchdog organization Velvet Revolution.us [Disclosure: The BRAD BLOG is co-founder of VR], concerning the New York Times' blatant and repeated mis-reporting on the James O'Keefe/Andrew Breitbart false ACORN "pimp" story, and the "paper of record's" remarkable excuses for still refusing to issue retractions, explanations and apologies:

Watchdog Group Demands Retraction and Explanation From New York Times for Multiple Inaccurate O'Keefe/ACORN/'Pimp' Reports

NYT's Senior Editor for Standards "stands by" repeated misreporting, cites Fox News appearance by rightwing propaganda "journalist" as "evidence," despite contrary eye-witness testimony, independent reports and video

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --- National nonpartisan watchdog group Velvet Revolution calls on the New York Times to immediately issue a retraction and correction of its repeated, inaccurate reporting that James O'Keefe entered offices of The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) dressed as a "pimp." This information is false.

"Not since the Times' flagrant and inexcusable front-page 'reporting' by Judith Miller on Saddam Hussein's non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction has the paper so irresponsibly, and repeatedly, in saturation coverage, helped to mislead the American people in a way that has caused so much harm," says Brad Friedman, Velvet Revolution co-founder and publisher of The BRAD BLOG, which first reported on the Times' errors.

In several stories over the past six months, the Times falsely reported that O'Keefe:

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




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