tagged w/ Citizen Journalists
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The premier political story of the past few months has been the Republican plan to dismantle Medicare and the resulting voter backlash. In town halls across the country, voters are expressing their anger at the GOP priorities of ending Medicare, extending tax breaks for the wealthy, and protecting subsidies for oil companies.
ThinkProgress has reported extensively from town halls in Florida, Wisconsin, Arizona, and elsewhere. In addition, citizen journalists have attended town halls and reported about them online, allowing others who couldn’t attend in person to see the event.
However, some congressmen are concerned about what could happen if citizen journalists repost their town halls on the Internet. At least two members of Congress have taken extraordinary measures to shut down the spread of information.
ThinkProgress readers passed along the following photos, taken outside town halls held by Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) and Rep. Joe Heck (R-NV). Barletta specifically barred citizen journalists and other non-credentialed media from recording the event, while Heck took a more encompassing approach of “no recording devices” at all:
When Republicans won back the House in 2010, one of their central promises was “to make Congress more transparent.” However, when it comes to their own congressional events, the same standard apparently does not apply.
Indeed, with members like Lou Barletta and Joe Heck barring citizens from recording the events and preventing those who couldn’t attend from seeing what the congressmen had to say, one has to ask: what are they trying to hide?
Update At his town hall, Heck reportedly faced a rowdy crowd upset about his vote for the Medicare-ending House Republican budget. When pressed, he backed away from the plan a bit, saying, “I’m not saying it’s the best idea, but it’s the only one and the best being proposed now."
(Can anyone tell me why Tea party can carry weapons,guns, and military replicas and we can't even have a tape player ?!)-figg
(some great comments at Think Progress and source)The premier political story of the past few months has been the Republican plan to... more
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ACORN, an umbrella organization of community groups that serves poor people in major cities across the country through housing, legal advocacy, family services, and higher wages, has lost all federal funding, after decades of working for low-income, disadvantaged Americans.
That the House of Representatives has moved swiftly on anything is stunning in and of itself. More stunning, this is in response to a single independent report by conservative activists, with no follow-up investigation, no hearings, not even being provided a copy of the full, unedited video tapes shot by conservative activists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles at a couple of ACORN offices.
This is serious stuff here. This is not a game of gotcha, of cheap political points, of practical jokes — not when this is money that helps in many real ways in impoverished communities around our country.
It is vital to assess how this backlash was accepted so quickly in light of videos that were from someone whose films are funded by conservative backers, videos that misrepresented ACORN through editing and not disclosing other failed attempts at their desired response, and may well have been dubbed over, if O’Keefe would dare to release the unedited tapes in their real context to prove otherwise.
A significant reason that this ACORN backlash has moved through Congress like Montezuma’s Revenge is that this particular hidden camera stunt had the ring of “child prostitution” in it, which most politicians of either party would run from rather than dispute its irrelevance. “Anyone defending ACORN is for child prostitution” is an immediate fallacious meme. It’s not like we’re talking about the Catholic Church here, which still gets federal funding.
Noteworthy is that there have not been any previous allegations between child prostitution and ACORN. In this weekend’s LA Times, O’Keefe himself asserts that this ruse had nothing to do with prostitution, importing underage sex workers, or tax help for starting up a business.
“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.”
That’s what this is really about: the elections, and the threat that has been hyped tirelessly that ACORN is in some way stealing your vote.
Before I digress into the long campaign to smear ACORN because of its successful voter registration, I don’t want to be accused to changing the subject to the elections. O’Keefe clearly stated that is what these stunts were about from the beginning.
There is much to dispute in O’Keefe’s quote. There is no evidence whatsoever that politicians are getting elected single-handedly by ACORN, and it is a wild exaggeration. Many claims of voter fraud are made, few instances ever occur.
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It is worth noting here that what transpired on O’Keefe’s videotape were conversations about hypothetical situations–not actual prostitution, no actual crime, and not proof of an agency-wide policy or program involving prostitution or illegal immigrants. In fact, O’Keefe’s experiment proves this–that several other ACORN offices would not be ensnared by their absurd scenario, and turned away these provocateurs. One office in Philadelphia filed a police report because they were alarmed by the pair.
Ironically, the only thing illegal in some of these tapes is that O’Keefe is filming illegally. States like California and Maryland have strict consent laws about surreptitious recording, which is why the news and entertainment industries have long figured out workarounds for hidden cameras. (Hint: Vegas.)
more at link....ACORN, an umbrella organization of community groups that serves poor people in major... more
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This supposition comes from conservative writer Rachel Marsden, who raises questions about the ethical implications of what they did. The “citizen journalists” James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, who went to ACORN offices dressed as a pimp and a prostitute, secretly taping them to see if they’d use taxpayer dollars to set up their “business.”
"You can’t just affix a pinhole camera on your “pimp and ho” costumes, go into the offices of a group you don’t particularly like, record what they say and publicise it. Especially when the state in which all this takes place has laws making it a criminal felony to record a conversation in the absence of both parties acknowledging or consenting."
Maryland has the option to file criminal charges if it wishes to enforce the law.This supposition comes from conservative writer Rachel Marsden, who raises questions... more
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Whether they are called citizen journalists or political watchdogs, while the mainstream press is contemplating its navel, these Americans are uncovering stories that put the New York Times and the Washington Post to shame.
The recent filmed expose of ACORN and its advice of how to get around getting a mortgage for a house of prostitution and avoid paying taxes was done by a little-known citizen journalist and a companion posing as a madam.Whether they are called citizen journalists or political watchdogs, while the... more
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