REVEALED: ACORN, NBC Worked Together in 'Undercover Video Sting'

Since the undercover ACORN videos from James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles first broke, the grand pooh-bahs of journalism have gone into self-absorbed philosopher mode. Rather than report on the ACORN corruption playing out before our eyes, “journalists” have tsk-tsked their way through thousands of words and yards of column inches making certain that everyone understands that what James and Hannah did IS…NOT…JOURNALISM. (As if that is the existential question to make sense of the ACORN videos.) Undercover videos and assuming fake identities are things real journalists do not do…except when they do.

Below is a page from ACORN’s 2005 Annual Report. In it, they tell the story of how one of their employees teamed up with NBC Dateline to do a ‘video sting’ on tax-preparer Jackson Hewitt.

Pages from 2005-ACORN-Annual-Report-web –

Somehow we missed the missives from the Columbia Journalism Review condemning NBC for staining journalism. We also can’t find James Rainey’s cliche-riddled scolding of NBC for taking part in ACORN’s intentional deception. We can’t imagine the journalism mandarins would approve of such tactics only because they approved of the target. Surely, the criticism of NBC must be out there. If our readers find any links to these critiques, please include them in the comments.

For greater context on the long history of hidden-camera videos and other forms of aggressive investigative journalism, see Michael Walsh’s piece here.