[PAA-Discuss] Credulous Reporting of Deceptive Propaganda Made Planned Parenthood Atta...
Juli3 at aol.com
Juli3 at aol.com
Mon Dec 14 11:37:57 EST 2015
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Credulous Reporting of Deceptive Propaganda Made Planned Parenthood
Attack Inevitable
(http://fair.us10.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=6cfce9b68d&e=c9c3a92938)
James O’Keefe in the pimp get-up he did not wear when he went in to smear
ACORN. (image: Fox News)
The attack on Planned Parenthood was probably inevitable after the right
saw how well the attack on ACORN was received.
ACORN, like Planned Parenthood, was at the top of the right’s list of
most-hated organizations, though in ACORN’s case its chief sin was not helping
women control their own bodies but rather helping poor people vote. ACORN
was taken off the board by a series of deceptively edited, cunningly
marketed hidden-camera videos, shot by right-wing prankster James O’Keefe (with
Hannah Giles) and marketed by BigGovernment.com‘s Andrew Breitbart.
The story that the videos told about ACORN was repeated uncritically by
elite reporters like the New York Times‘ Scott Shane (_9/16/09_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=17aa575acc&e=
c9c3a92938) ), :
The undercover videos showed a scantily dressed young woman, Hannah Giles,
posing as a prostitute, while a young man, James O’Keefe, played her pimp.
They visited ACORN offices in Baltimore, Washington, Brooklyn and San
Bernardino, Calif., candidly describing their illicit business and asking the
advice of ACORN workers. Among other questions, they asked how to buy a
house to use as a brothel employing underage girls from El Salvador…. In the
footage made public—initially by a new website, BigGovernment.com—ACORN
employees raised no objections to the criminal plans. Instead, they eagerly
counseled the couple on how to hide their activities from the authorities,
avoid taxes and make the brothel scheme work.
As became clear when the tapes (and accompanying transcripts) were
examined by more skeptical eyes, O’Keefe and Giles did not go into ACORN’s
offices in outlandish costumes. They presented O’Keefe as a concerned boyfriend
trying to protect Giles from a fictional abusive pimp. The “advice” they
got on how to evade taxes or set up brothels turned out to be the product
of selective editing. (See FAIR Action Alert, _3/11/10_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=7a38bac17f&e=c9c3a929
38) ; Extra!, _4/10_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=dc56257ed4&e=c9c3a92938) .) In one instance, an
ACORN employee called police to report the pair’s suspicious visit (FAIR Blog,
_7/23/10_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=8f59fd2404&e=c9c3a92938) ).
But rather than criticizing O’Keefe and Breitbart for perpetrating a hoax,
leading corporate media outlets suggested apologetically that they should
have done more to spotlight the misleading story. New York Times public
editor Clark Hoyt (_9/27/09_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=d539999257&e=c9c3a92938) ) warned that if
papers like his miss such stories, they might “wind up looking clueless or,
worse, partisan.”
Centrist media critics endorsed the deceptive project, with the Columbia
Journalism Review (_9/18/09_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=dddf4c7583&e=c9c3a92938) ) pronouncing, “ACORN
got caught on candid camera, and they got caught good.” The Washington
Post‘s Howard Kurtz (_10/7/09_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=722a083e29&e=c9c3a92938) ) wrote that the
videos “proved to be a legitimate story,” while Slate media critic Jack
Shafer (_9/23/09_ (http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573d
aa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=caa560f7da&e=c9c3a92938) ) claimed that even “critics of
Breitbart and the filmmakers don’t really dispute the basic information
unearthed by the videos.”
“I have to give you credit for this,” ABC‘s George Stephanopoulos told
Breitbart (This Week, _6/1/10_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=11a1cc6e23&e=c9c3a92938) ); “on ACORN, you
did expose people doing things they shouldn’t do.”
(http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=f0c70cdb64&e=c9c3a92938)
Shirley Sherrod, another victim of the right-wing smear factory. (image:
CNN)
With encouragement like that–not to mention that the video attack
succeeded in driving ACORN to _disband_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=5e0f39d48c&e=c9c3a92938) in April 2010–it’
s no wonder that O’Keefe and Breitbart continued to use the same
unscrupulous techniques against the right’s enemies. In July 2010, Breitbart
released a tape of Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod in which she
seemed to be boasting that she refused to help a white farmer because of
his race. When the full tape of Sherrod’s talk came out, it turned out she
was actually talking about how she overcame her prejudices to help the farmer
and recognize that “there is no difference between us.” But by that
point, Sherrod had already been forced out of her job (FAIR Blog, _7/21/10_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=89a
6615361&e=c9c3a92938) ).
O’Keefe claimed another victim when he forced the resignation of NPR CEO
Vivian Schiller after releasing a tape of an NPR fundraiser meeting with a
fake Muslim charity (FAIR Blog, _3/11/11_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=2d7cd95e71&e=c9c3a92938) ,
_3/14/11_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=acf6ffca90&e=c9c3a92938) ). The tape as edited by O’Keefe appeared
to show the fundraiser making light of Sharia law and asserting that the
Republican Party had been “hijacked” by the Tea Party—but an analysis of
the full tape found that “several key scenes were edited misleadingly….
Several of the most embarrassing moments were cobbled together or left out
context” (Time, _3/13/11_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=e90024433d&e=c9c3a92938) ).
Why did O’Keefe in this case post the full video when it revealed his
shenanigans? Time‘s James Poniewozik had a revealing take:
If O’Keefe hadn’t posted the source video, it would have invited
suspicion.
Instead he posted it and took the chance that most people would watch the
edited video (or just clips from it on the news); that reporters, pressed
for time with a stack of other assignments, would cover the edited video;
that blogs (_including, I will admit, this one_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=b3a3d46c0f&e=c9c3a92938) )
would link to those reports; and that by the time anyone took the time to
go over the full video, the narrative would be established, the quotes stuck
in people’s minds and the ideological battle won.
As the resignation of NPR‘s boss indicates, it was a chance well worth
taking.
(http://fair.us10.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=06c6696d32&e=c9c3a92938)
David Daleiden, a friend of James O’Keefe’s who used the same deceptive
tactics to go after Planned Parenthood. (image: Fox News)
Even more loathed on the right than ACORN or NPR, of course, is Planned
Parenthood, and O’Keefe’s methods were naturally applied to going after the
reproductive health clinics. In fact, O’Keefe targeted anti-Planned
Parenthood before he targeted ACORN—making _undercover videos_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=c2f77358e6&e=c9c3
a92938) at Planned Parenthood clinics in 2007 and 2008 with one Lila
Rose, who went on to found a group called Life Force making _similar videos_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=19
6606b2cb&e=c9c3a92938) for a group called Live Action. Live Action, in
turn, was where David Daleiden, who made the more recent Planned Parenthood
videos under the nameplate of the “Center for Medical Progress,” learned
his techniques. Daleiden calls O’Keefe a friend (NPR, _7/22/15_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=af6c9fcdd4&e
=c9c3a92938) ).
Given the connection, it’s no surprise that the Planned Parenthood videos
used the same bag of tricks that O’Keefe had employed to such success:
_deceptive editing_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=b78aca74b7&e=c9c3a92938) , _false framing_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=8b00c7228c&e=c
9c3a92938) , _misrepresented visuals_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=26aad18ce7&e=c9c3a92938) . And it’s
also not a surprise that corporate media—concerned about seeming “clueless
” but even more worried about appearing “partisan”—gave plentiful
newshole to Daleiden’s claims, and to right-wing politicians who echoed him,
generally in a “he said/she said” format. As Janine Jackson put it on
CounterSpin (_8/7/15_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=deecd2b99c&e=c9c3a92938) ):
As long as reporters feel that they have to report every politicians’
claim basically credulously, to give weight and attention to baseless
assertions because they were in fact made by a person who’s running for office,
then there’s always a benefit to saying the most inflammatory, distorted
thing, because even if it’s criticized, the journalists’ rule requires still
require going back to that person to credulously entertain whatever
cockamamie thing they say next.
The most inflammatory, distorted thing you could say, of course, is that
Planned Parenthood is “selling baby parts”—which the videos provided no
evidence of, and in fact edited out numerous instances where Planned
Parenthood representatives explain in no uncertain terms that they can’t and don’t
do that. Nevertheless, the videos provoked a deluge of coverage revolving
around the question, “Does Planned Parenthood sell baby parts?”—until,
predictably enough, three people were murdered in a Planned Parenthood
clinic by someone exclaiming “No more baby parts!”
(http://fair.us10.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=e8fcbbb10a&e=c9c3a92938)
After Robert Dear allegedly murdered three at a Planned Parenthood clinic,
the New York Times wrote that abortion “fomented political passions on
both the left and the right.” (image: KVOR)
In the aftermath of the killings, media still couldn’t seem to get past
the on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand mindset to say that Planned Parenthood
had been targeted on the basis of unfounded allegation. Thus Reuters
(_11/29/15_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=d85fbd7d66&e=c9c3a92938) ):
Conservatives have accused Planned Parenthood, a nonprofit that provides a
range of health services, including abortion, of illegally selling baby
parts, an accusation it has strenuously denied.
Or you take the route of the New York Times (_11/27/15_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=a74e8b2ecb&e=c9c3a
92938) ), where the “selling baby parts” lie was left out, leaving it
entirely unclear why Planned Parenthood was “criticized”:
The shooting came at a time when Planned Parenthood has been criticized
because of surreptitious videos made by anti-abortion groups of officials
discussing using fetal organs for research.
Then the Times (_11/29/15_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=cb10521ef8&e=c9c3a92938) ) can cast blame on
both sides–for “foment[ing] political passions”:
Congressional supporters and opponents of Planned Parenthood were
uncharacteristically subdued over the weekend as they awaited more information
about the shooting…. But considering the extent to which Planned Parenthood
has fomented political passions on both the left and the right in Washington,
that restraint seems unlikely to hold.
In fact, there is blame to be shared for fomenting murderous passions—not
between reproductive health clinics and those who smear them, but between
the right-wing propagandists who create the smears and their corporate
enablers who through credulous pseudo-journalism transmute the smears into “
news.”
____________________________________
Jim Naureckas is the editor of _FAIR.org_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=088304a1ab&e=c9c3a92938) .
Follow him on Twitter: _ at JNaureckas_ (http://fair.us10.list-m
anage.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=7b70024921&e=c9c3a92938) .
Read the original post _here_
(http://fair.us10.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095505b58&id=ec4dc9e31f&e=c9c3a92938) .
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