ACORN Investigation

An investigation, done by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, into ACORN finally came out this week, and it had a very interesting interpretation of the undercover videos released back in August.  The report said:

The unedited videos have never been made public. The videos that have been released appear to have been edited, in some cases substantially, including the insertion of a substitute voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O’Keefe’s and Ms.Giles’s comments, which makes it difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding. A comparison of the publicly available transcripts to the released videos confirms that large portions of the original video have been omitted from the released versions. To date, the videographers have declined or ignored our interview requests.

Now, exactly what was edited and/or dubbed over I don’t know, but I think it gives credence to my comments from September, specifically that the videos, as presented, required viewers to believe that ACORN’s employees and volunteers would “freely, openly, and without thought of financial compensation volunteer their illegal services to help total strangers engage in their unthinkably perverse crimes.”

I’m glad to know that the evidence is pointing away from that scenario, not because I have any particular love for ACORN, but because it simply didn’t make sense.

It makes me wonder, though, if we’ve completely moved away from good, old-fashioned spin and just started faking the news outright?