Many--if not most--of us have known the mainstream media is useless. It has been little more than a propaganda arm of the Democrat party for years. During the 2008 presidential election, however, they gave up all pretense of being objective when they decided to decline any investigation into Obama's past while doing a silly hatchet job on Sarah Palin.

The mainstream media has been dead for some time. But September 2009 is when it was officially buried. The funeral service was performed by two young new media investigative journalists with the unsuspecting assistance of ACORN.

Burial Begins: Summer 2009

The funeral service really began in August when the mainstream media was not able to keep a lid on the town hall protests going on around the country during the August Congressional recess. The media was routinely mocked for ignoring the crowds, underestimating attendance, and often writing off the protesters as a fringe movement. Yet the movement continued throughout August and drove President Obama's poll ratings down to the lowest level of his presidency. It got so bad that when Congress returned, they were forced to act as a prop in Obama's bid to get more prime time media coverage. And they couldn't even pull that off without a town hall-style outburst by Rep. Joe Wilson.

Over Labor Day weekend, President Obama's "Green Czar" Van Jones resigned under mounting pressure from the new media. Van Jones resigned around midnight on Saturday of the long Labor Day weekend, and there was little reporting by the mainstream media before, during, or after his departure. Someone who only read the mainstream media might have even missed the fact that one of Obama's appointed czar's had effectively resigned in disgrace, let alone know why. Yet despite the fact that the mainstream media refused to cover the story, the czar was gone.

Then there was the 9/12 March on Washington, D.C. Multiple pictures and videos show a massive crowd that was reported in the UK as "as many as one million people" . Meanwhile, in the U.S., the mainstream media scarcely reported it--and when they did, it as "tens of thousands" of people. Sure, maybe it wasn't a million. Perhaps it was half that. But even if it was "only" 500,000, reporting it as "tens of thousands" does a disservice to the truth.

But all of that is water under the bridge.

Burial Complete: September 2009

The final burial was conducted starting on September 10th by James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles. These two individuals, posting their investigation to BigGovernment.com , did the job that the media used to do: They engaged in some old-style investigative reporting.

It wasn't complicated. It wasn't expensive. Just two people with some kind of small camera, presumably a "button-cam," which allowed them to covertly videotape their interaction with employees of ACORN. That's the same ACORN that has been accused repeatedly of election fraud in multiple states.

You'd think that with so many accusations and indictments over the years that the organization would be ripe for an in-depth, undercover investigative report by some major media firm. Maybe 60 Minutes? Maybe a local newspaper? Maybe a national newspaper? Yet that didn't happen.

It took the two enterprising and motivated journalists mentioned above. They don't work for CBS News. Nor ABC News. Nor Fox, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, the Associated Press, or any other mainstream media outlet. They did the investigation themselves and broke their story not on network TV or cable news, but on a brand new website, BigGovernment.com.

The investigation was as simple as it was amazing: O'Keefe would act the part of a pimp and Giles the part of a prostitute. They'd enter an ACORN office and basically solicit advice on how to get a loan to purchase a house from which to run their prostitution business, they'd ask how they could launder the money so that the earnings could be funneled into O'Keefe's supposed congressional campaign, they got advice on how to engage in tax evasion on their illegal earnings, and they even got ideas on how to manage a dozen underage girls they were supposedly bringing from El Salvador to engage in prostitution.

Did the ACORN employees vomit at the thought of what was being proposed? Did they kick the young couple out of their office? Did they call law enforcement? No, no, and no.

First the Baltimore ACORN office was filmed being more than cooperative. Then the Washington, D.C. office. Then ACORN said that the couple had tried this at a number of locations, including New York, but had failed. The next day the couple proved ACORN was lying when they published their video of the New York office being complicit. Then it was revealed that ACORN appears to be operating in Maryland illegally . Then they dropped a bombshell when they broke the news that the San Bernadino ACORN office was also willing to help--not only that, the employee had engaged in prostitution in the past, had avoided paying taxes on tens of thousands of illegal cash earnings, killed her husband, and supposedly had regular contact with a number of Californian politicians. Sure, it would seem the woman in this latest video isn't playing with a full deck and is probably making stuff up, but...

Last Friday, a few mainstream media channels briefly reported that the U.S. Census had severed ties with ACORN as an apparent result of the growing scandal. But coverage was minimal and muted, and there was an amazing lack of follow-up. In fact, in the New York Times article just provided, there wasn't even mention of the amazing videos that had already been made public by that time.

Then the Senate voted 83-7 to deny ACORN funding via HUD which forced the mainstream media to report on that. Some mention began to appear about the reasons the tide was suddenly turning against ACORN.

But as of Tuesday, September 15th at 9pm Mountain, just hours after the most shocking ACORN video to-date from San Bernadino and the day after the Senate voted to cut off funding, there is not a single mention of ACORN on the CNN home page--though the major story is that there are "No answers yet in death of Yale student." Apparently CNN finds it more important to report the lack of news than to report the amazing story unfolding with ACORN.

Likewise, there's no mention on MSNBC's home page. The big news is "Don't be surprised to see more bank failures."

There's no mention of it on ABC New's home page.

The story is mentioned at CBS, though as the third story--the top stories being "Joe Wilson Admonished in House Resolution" and "Police Storm Apartment of Yale Researcher."

Fox News, to its credit, does have it as one of its two major stories.

On the other hand, back at ABC, anchorman Charlie Gibson claimed to have no knowledge of the scandal. ""I don't even know about it... So you've got me at a loss" This statement was made after the U.S. Census Bureau had severed ties with ACORN the previous Friday and the day after the Senate rebuked ACORN 83-7 the previous day. And this "newsman" doesn't know about it? He's either an uninformed and incompetent reporter or he's not willing to go after ACORN. Either way it would seem to be a pointless exercise to get news from ABC when their anchorman isn't even aware of one of the most sensational stories produced by true investigative journalism in recent years.

Is This a Story?

So the question is--Is this a story that the mainstream media should be reporting?

ACORN is one of the largest--if not the largest--group of community organizations in the country. It has over 400,000 members and a presence in more than 100 cities in the U.S., as well as some Latin American countries . It's been repeatedly accused of electoral fraud and has received over $53 million in government funds since 1994. It helped strengthen the Community Reinvestment Act which was a contributing factor to the current economic crisis. And now there are multiple examples of ACORN employees in ACORN offices endorsing and explaining how to engage in a series of felonies.

If that weren't enough to justify a little more reporting on the part of the mainstream media, the fact that then-candidate Obama promised that prostitution-enabling ACORN and other similar organizations that they'd be shaping his presidency should be. The fact that this organization endorsed then-candidate Obama ought to provoke some reporting by the media. The fact that Obama associated with ACORN just 15 years ago (as depicted in this picture) ought to draw some media reporting.

Please don't misunderstand me--I'm NOT suggesting President Obama was ever involved in anything like this.

But this is a corrupt organization that has demonstrated a pattern of being a willing accomplice in disgusting criminal behavior, that has engaged in voter fraud, that was paid by the Obama campaign during his primary battle to help register voters, that endorsed Obama, that has received tens of millions of government dollars, and that was promised by candidate Obama to have a role in shaping the Obama administration.

Is that not news? Is that really not worthy of reporting? What explanation is there for nearly a week of silence on this topic by the mainstream media? And would the media be ignoring the story if it were a Republican president with past contacts with such a shady operation?

The silence of the mainstream media cannot be excused.

Mainstream Media Is Irrelevant For News

Regardless, it should be clear why the old media is going bankrupt left and right. They no longer search out the news. They no longer search out the controversial stories. And when those stories are handed to them on a silver platter by a couple of twenty-somethings, they don't report it when it doesn't help their agenda.

Is it any surprise that fewer and fewer people are getting their news from the mainstream media?

Update 9/17/2009: The lack of media coverage and a lot of what I said above is being noticed overseas.



You would be forgiven for having missed it, however, because it's got almost no play in the mainstream media. It wasn't the 'New York Times', CNN or NBC who broke the story. Rather, it was two twenty-something independents with a few thousand dollars, a bit of time and a lot of guts...

Don't believe me? Well have a listen to this well-known member of the vast Right-wing conspiracy (not) Jon Stewart, who mocks the smug complacency of liberals and the torpor of the mainstream media by calling it how it is here.



Update 9/29/2009: A video at PJTV draws almost exactly the same conclusion as I did two weeks ago. It's worth watching.