Darryl Fears & Carol Leonnig being the Washington reporters who did their level best to make their story about James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles racial:
Though O’Keefe described himself as a progressive radical, not a conservative, he said he targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: its massive voter registration drives that turn out poor African Americans and Latinos against Republicans.
“Politicians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization,” he said. “No one was holding this organization accountable. No one in the media is putting pressure on them. We wanted to do a stunt and see what we could find.”
(Bolding mine) Well, guess who had to retract that passage by Darryl Fears & Carol Leonnig*?
Correction to This Article
This article about the community organizing group ACORN incorrectly said that a conservative journalist targeted the organization for hidden-camera videos partly because its voter-registration drives bring Latinos and African Americans to the polls. Although ACORN registers people mostly from those groups, the maker of the videos, James E. O’Keefe, did not specifically mention them.
All via Powerline here and here. While I’m glad to see that the Washington Post has retracted the racism charges made by their staff writers Darryl Fears & Carol Leonnig, it would be better if the newspaper did not permit such charges to be alleged without cause in the first place. Such activities are completely unsuitable for a national newspaper – particularly one that prides itself on objective news reporting.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
Steve Maley
KnightsofMalta
Pretty low standard for corrections
E Pluribus Unum (Diary) Tuesday, September 22nd at 2:31PM EST (link)Instead of saying it was wrong – and it was a grossly wrong, deliberately slanderous statement by Fears & Leonnig, they basically said :
We can’t prove that it was racism, even though we believe it was.
Kill the Terrorists
Protect the Borders
Punch the Hippies h/t IMAO
"Did not specifically mention them"
gahazzah (Diary) Tuesday, September 22nd at 2:43PM EST (link)You know… they implied it… by being white and conservative.
Jeez, now they have to retract the obvious in newspapers? What’s next, fact checking?
/sarcasm
/government
Well and truly stated.
RedBeard Tuesday, September 22nd at 2:57PM EST (link)It was a lukewarm correction, dripping with resentment over being forced to make the correction at all.
Standard-bearer for grouchy curmudgeonry since, oh, 1975 or so.
But...
cringinghere (Diary) Tuesday, September 22nd at 3:17PM EST (link)But… but… the seriousness of the charge was essentially important… right?
Moe, you missed the other point
Charles Cianfrocca (Diary) Tuesday, September 22nd at 4:39PM EST (link)Not only does he concede that O’Keefe didn’t say it, he did apparently concede and confirm that it was TRUE – that ACORN, which gets federal funds, is there to register people “against Republicans”. Isn’t there a law?
“Get your hand out of my pocket. Ain’t nothin’ there that belongs to you.”
- Sonny Boy Williamson
I hope this fish wrapper
Warrior (Diary) Wednesday, September 23rd at 10:03AM EST (link)will soon be a thing of the past, a museum curiosity which us old folks will have to explain to the youngsters…
“Well son, they originally were designed to provide news of the day to the public. However, they became propaganda sheets in the end and even the basic survival instinct of any business couldn’t wrench them away from fawning adulations of the Great Leader, Prez Obeyme, scurrilous charges against innocent people and socialist screeds pretending to be news reports…”
“Racial criteria are irrational, irrelevant, [and] odious to our way of life.” — Thurgood Marshall for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the 1950 Supreme Court case of McLaurin v. Oklahoma