Duane Patterson reacts to the New York Times ACORN piece:
Notice any cities in Ms. Lewis’ litany of failed attempts by O’Keefe and Giles that do not appear in Mr. Shane’s list? I’ll give you a hint. It’s the largest city in the nation. Need a second hint? It also is the city that the Times is purportedly in business to serve. That’s right, New York.
Why is this important? After the release of the first two videos in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., Ms. Lewis wrote the statement on Saturday trying to reassure supporters that this was nothing but a racist smear campaign by Fox News, and tried to leave the impression that this stunt had failed far more times that it had succeeded, and in doing so, mentioned some pretty high profile big cities, including New York. Two days after her statement, the New York videos were made public, making the heart of Ms. Lewis’ claim inaccurate.
Did Scott Shane simply overlook New York while reading the statement? Or did he intentionally overlook New York when writing his story so he wouldn’t have had to do what any journalist should do, which is call ACORN’s office, talk to Ms. Lewis, and ask why the sting happened in New York after she said it hadn’t, and why her statement has vanished from the ACORN website already?
Instead, Mr. Shane closed his story by using some quotes from the Lewis statement, called a lefty think tank for a comment, which gave him the desired reaction, then called someone at the Heritage Foundation, who gave him the desired quote dealing with hand-wringing over the age of internet journalism in which we live, instead of the good old days when we all got our news from Morley Safer and Mike Wallace at 60 Minutes.
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