News Media Repeated Unverified Voter-Fraud Allegations Against Acorn, Study Concludes

September 24, 2009

News Media Repeated Unverified Voter-Fraud Allegations Against Acorn, Study Concludes

The mainstream news media repeatedly echoed unverified allegations and distortions when covering charges by conservative commentators of voter fraud against Acorn, the community-organizing group, during the 2008 presidential campaign, according to a new study by university scholars.

The study, which analyzed 647 stories in 15 major news outlets and additional stories in three local newspapers, found that “the news media agenda is easily permeated by persistent conservative media campaigns, even when there is little or no truth to the story.”

The analysis was conducted by Peter Dreier, director of the Urban and Environmental Policy Center at Occidental College, in Los Angeles, and Christopher Martin, professor of journalism at the University of Northern Iowa, in Cedar Falls.

Acorn, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is now under fire because employees were videotaped giving tax advice to a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute. The House and Senate have voted to cut off federal funds to the group.

The academic study found that news-media coverage of the voter-fraud charges failed to distinguish between problems with registering voters and actual voting irregularities, which are rare. It also found that 80 percent of the stories failed to mention that Acorn was reporting registration irregularities to the authorities; 85 percent failed to report that the group was acting to stop incidents of registration problems; and 96 percent failed to provide deeper context, especially about efforts by Republican Party officials to use voter-fraud allegations to dampen voting by low-income and minority Americans.

The report, “Manipulating the Public Agenda: Why Acorn was the News, and What the News Got Wrong,” is available on the Occidental College and University of Northern Iowa Web sites.

— Suzanne Perry

Comments

Does this mean Barack will be reprising his role as ACORN defense lawyer?

ACORN: Association of Criminals Obama Represented in the Nineties.

“I’ve been fighting alongside of ACORN on issues you care about my entire career [ including child “services”, financial “services”, and “voter” registration? ] Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote in Illinois, Acorn was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.” —Obama, 2007

ACORN: Assisting Call-girls, Obama, Reid and Nancy

— JupiterSuite Sep 24, 11:45 PM #
JupiterSuite,

Does this mean that you’ll actually read the article and the underlying study or will you continue to parrot right-wing talking points that fail to move us forward as a nation?

— AnnaMerkin Sep 25, 02:45 AM #
It would be nice when local media report that investigations by law enforcement, local officials, and others of ACORN’s compliticity in fraud turn up nothing that national media report that, too. Instead it is just all reporting on allegations and no follow up. In Florida, ACORN won libel suits against those that claimed it organized fraudulent voter registration drives. How often is that reported?

— Anna Lyst Sep 25, 06:49 AM #
I highly recommend that, in addition to this study, that everyone read this investigative report by Jason Leopold over at The Public Record. It’s a very long story but worth the read. His story is one that the Washington Post and the Times should have written.

http://pubrecord.org/nation/5510/republican-against-acorn-starring/

— Kathy Melendez Sep 25, 10:53 PM #
The “studies” you refer to are themselves misleading, full of non sequiturs, weasel-words and twisted logic. ACORN is permeated with corruption, and its defenders and allies are delusional or subversive, or both.

— Jeff Steele Sep 28, 12:15 PM #
The “studies” you refer to are themselves misleading, full of non sequiturs, weasel-words and twisted logic. FOX NEWS is permeated with corruption, and its defenders and allies are delusional or subversive, or both

— SaneGuy Oct 1, 12:11 PM #
I wonder why those that are trying to strip Acorn of their funding are silent about the organizations that have actually been convicted of crimes that are still allowed to continue to receive government funding? Companies like Haliburton, Lockheed, KBR, and so on.

— Todd Schacherl Oct 1, 02:33 PM #
One of the companies who has been paid hundreds of millions of taxpayers money has engaged in sex slavery. Republicans like to accuse others of what they are actually doing.

— Joyfuljoy Oct 1, 09:36 PM #
It’s scary how right wingers just repeat the talking points of their leaders without reading the article themselves.
Right wingers behave like zombies and zombies are indeed dangerous.

— Jimbo Oct 2, 08:42 AM #

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