Why "Mainstream Media" Isn't Covering the "Pimp and Pro" ACORN Story
Eventually the "Pimp and Pro" ACORN story should help to focus national attention on ACORN political corruption and ACORN's status as an unofficial arm of the Democratic Party. But that's not where the Obama/ACORN/Far Left enablers in the liberal media establishment want to go.
Hannah Giles referred to the story of the sensational videotapes starring her and James O'Keefe and exquisitely exposing ACORN's willingness to facilitate prostitution, child prostitution, child abuse, illegal immigration, tax fraud and bank fraud as "[t]he 'Pimp and Pro' ACORN story in her recent article titled "LameStream Media: Why Did You Bypass These Juicy ACORN Nuggets?," up at both Townhall.com and BigGovernment.com.
I'd give Ms. Giles top billing, but "Pimp and Pro" ACORN story it is!
Ms. Giles lamented that "the Mainstream Media’s favorite approach seems to be the method in which James and I orchestrated and gathered the information" and analogized to "going fishing, but instead of taking a picture and raving about the 750lb Mako shark you caught, you blather on about the bait that was used."
Sadly, Ms. Giles is right about the "mainstream media," of course, there are laws governing the gathering of information (just as there are laws governing hunting and fishing), those laws vary from state to state and not all of the jurisdictions in which
there was surreptitious recording permit a party to a private conversation to record the conversation without the consent of the other party or parties.
The "Pimp and Pro" ACORN story videos memorialized the gorgeous Ms. Giles scantily clad. That would have won much more "mainstream media" attention to the "Pimp and Pro" ACORN story IF the target had been the National Rifle Association instead of ACORN and equivalent outrageous wrongdoing had been discovered. But that was not the case.
The reason for the paucity of "mainstream media" coverage certainly ISN'T that Ms. Giles was not sufficiently attractive.
It's that Ms. Giles was starring in a story that the "mainstream media" did not want to report.
Anita MonCrief, an ACORN whistleblower exposing ACORN before Glenn Beck took up the task too, discovered last October that The New York Times, ABC and CNN did not want to report on illicit cooperation between ACORN affiliate/alter ego Project Vote and the Obama presidential campaign, a much more important story of corrupting America's politics process than the story of ACORN's willingness to facilitate to facilitate prostitution, child prostitution, child abuse, illegal immigration, tax fraud and bank fraud.
Ms. MonCrief did not pose as a prostitute, much less have videos, but she had personal knowledge of what ACORN really is all about and Obama, Clinton, Kerry and DNC voting lists provided to ACORN's Project Vote. If the illicit coordination between corrupt ACORN and the Obama presidential campaign had been covered instead of covered up by the "mainstream media," Obama's false claim during the last presidential debate that his relationship with ACORN consisted of winning a motor-vote case for them, with the support of the United States Justice Department, would have been exposed as a blatant lie and his radical ties would have kept him from being elected instead of helped him to be elected.
The "Pimp and Pro" videos and the way that they were released have exposed ACORN lies superbly, but the mainstream media is not interested in exposing those lies.
Ms. Giles wrote in her latest article: "I would HATE to be known as the journalist who never saw the bigger picture, lacked the creativity and ambition to approach a story from a fresh perspective, and contributed to the apathy of an entire nation. And I honestly, from the bottom of my heart, think every wannabe and professional journalist has the same attitude."
Idealists!
Ms. Giles, meet Ms. MonCrief.
In time, you too will learn that not "every wannabe and professional journalist has the same attitude."
If the editors at The New York Times had that attitude, the McCains would be living in the White House and New York Times national correspondent would be a Pulitzer Prize winner.
Ms. Giles: "So why aren’t they behaving accordingly? Fear? Comfort? A false sense of purpose?"
Power and the politics of bigger and bigger government, less and less freedom and wealth redistribution!
Last year National Journal's Stuart Taylor wrote: "“The media can no longer be trusted to provide accurate and fair campaign reporting and analysis.” An independent centrist, he acknowledged “a double standard driven by liberal bias at most major news organizations.”
Taylor: “I was deeply dismayed by the 72-year-old McCain's reckless choice of the inexperienced and untested Palin to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. But I am also deeply skeptical when I see front-page headlines like ‘As Mayor of Wasilla, Palin Cut Own Duties, Left Trail of Bad Blood’ (Washington Post, September 14), or ‘Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes’ (New York Times, same day). Such loaded language is a badge not of a newsroom committed to impartial investigation but of an ideological echo chamber.”
Ms. Giles took credit for the "Pimp and Pro" idea, telling Sean Hannity on his television program: "Well, Sean, it's amazing what girls think about when they are jogging. And that was just something that popped into my head. I had never seen an ACORN office, I really didn't even know that they existed and I jogged into the wrong part of town, saw some homeless people and street ladies and I put two and two together when I turned around to get back into a safe neighborhood. And it's like — what if these people went into ACORN — a prostitute and what would come from that? No bills, no nothing — would they get a house? Could they start a business? So we put it to the test."
They put it to the test, and first ACORN and then the liberal media establishment failed the tests.
As for who's idea it was for Ms. Giles to play the prostitute, Ms. Giles and Mr. O'Keefe each give the other credit.
Ms. Giles in an article by her at BigGovernment.com: "When I pitched the 'prostitute goes into ACORN seeking housing' idea to James O’Keefe at the beginning of the summer, I had absolutely no idea how he would respond. He came back with, 'Would you be willing to portray the prostitute? And if so, when can you do this?'"
Mr. O'Keefe on "Hannity": "Well, my friend Hannah, messaged me on Facebook and suggested — we're both activist, we've both done a lot of activism in the past and she suggest[ed] just — she was walking by [a]n ACORN [office] one day and she said, 'What if I went in dressed as a prostitute?'"
Ms. Giles' dad, Doug Giles, said that his daughter did the pitching long before the summer.
Mr. Giles: "The truth of the matter, from a timeline standpoint, is that they hatched their plan in May of ’09, fine-tuned it from May 20th – July 23rd, and then launched July 24th, fully accomplishing their mission by the end of August. And that’s a fact to all those for whom facts still matter."
The liberal media establishment probably would pay much more attention to the "Pimp and Pro" ACORN story is Ms. Giles held a press conference (especially if she held in one of her "Pro" outfits. ACORN has sued the intrepid investigators and prosecutors in Maryland, California and perhaps California are pondering whether the surreptitious recording without the consent of all parties that resulted in the sensational videos should be excused in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion or prosecuted under state criminal law, however, so Ms. Giles may not be taking questions from the news media, except perhaps from Fox News.
Ironically, prosecutions may bring even the attention of the liberal media establishment to the "Pimp and Pro" ACORN story.
If Mr. Giles is correct, then the first target of the sting was ACORN's Baltimore office, which is located in a state that makes willful surreptitious recording of private conversation a felony.
ACORN and the now fired ACORN employees seen on the Baltimore video have to be rooting for prosecution, since the video cannot be used as evidence against them if it is the result of a violation of the Maryland criminal law.
Mr. Giles has said that eight ACORN offices were targeted.
Up to six of them seem to be in all-party-consent states. We know they include Baltimore, D.C., New York, Philadelphia, San Bernardino and San Diego. Only the District of Columbia and New York permit surreptitious recording by one party to a private conversation. Mr. O'Keefe said the intrepid investigators also visited ACORN's Los Angeles office. California requires all parties to consent, so California authorities will determine whether to prosecute with respect to one or more of the stings at up to three ACORN offices in California. Miami is probably the eighth ACORN office. It has been said that the sting was conducted on the east and west coasts and on the east coast Ms. Giles and Mr. O'Keefe traveled up and down Route 95. Also, Ms. Giles is a Floridian. Unfortunately, Florida too is an all-parties-must-consent state.
Eventually the "Pimp and Pro" ACORN story should help to focus national attention on ACORN political corruption and ACORN's status as an unofficial arm of the Democratic Party. But that's not where the Obama/ACORN/Far Left enablers in the liberal media establishment want to go.
Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.
Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.
The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.
Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.