{"id":1068,"date":"2009-09-17T16:31:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-17T20:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/09\/17\/acorn-spin-and-crummy-journalism\/"},"modified":"2009-09-17T16:31:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-17T20:31:00","slug":"acorn-spin-and-crummy-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/09\/17\/acorn-spin-and-crummy-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Acorn, spin, and crummy journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago, David Sommerstein wrote a great post in this blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He told how a political activist had spread a rumor among journalists –in that case, a Democrat was trying to spark negative coverage of Republican Dede Scozzafava.<\/p>\n

The operative then disseminated a resulting news story as evidence that there was something to the rumor.<\/p>\n

That’s the spin cycle. <\/p>\n

We’re seeing it again with the Hoffman campaign’s Acorn attack on Scozzafava. <\/p>\n

Conservative Doug Hoffman is accusing the Republican of suspicious ties to “radical” leftists. The claim is ludicrous. <\/p>\n

Hoffman’s people are upset with me for dismissing their attack out of hand, but please.<\/p>\n

Whatever your opinion of Acorn, the notion that a veteran Republican Assemblywoman from Gouverneur is sympathetic to leftist agitators simply doesn’t pass the sniff test.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, not every journalist uses the sniff test. <\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a>‘s Chris Cillizza (whom I generally admire) lists Hoffman’s accusation as evidence that the Acorn issue could pose a significant political challenge…for Democrats.<\/p>\n

\n

The ACORN effect is even hitting the campaign trail. In New York’s 23rd district special election, Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman<\/a><\/strong> is hitting state Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>(R) for her alleged ties to ACORN. <\/p>\n

The efficacy of these attacks remain to be seen —<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note that Cillizza only thinly points out — with that tiny “R” — that this particular attack is being made against a Republican, not a Democrat.<\/p>\n

In fact, the Republican leading the charge against Acorn, minority leader Rep. John Boehner, is supporting…Dede Scozzava. <\/p>\n

Boehner says he hopes to place Scozzafava on the House Armed Services Committee — hardly the place for a radical leftist.<\/p>\n

Despite this obvious disconnect, the Hoffman campaign distributed the Washington Post article to support the notion that there’s traction to this narrative. <\/p>\n

Obviously, the Conservatives aren’t the only folks going negative early. Scozzafava’s campaign issued a press release a couple of weeks ago suggesting that Hoffman was foaming at the mouth.<\/p>\n

In a fast special election, voters — and journalists — will have to be savvy enough to pick through this stuff, identifying the issues and questions that really matter.<\/p>\n

What do you think? Am I missing something? Is Acorn a big deal to you? Comment below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago, David Sommerstein wrote a great post in this blog. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[874],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}