WaPo corrects Darryl Fears, Carol Leonnig race card smear of ACORN sting videomakers

On 9/18/09, Darryl Fears and Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post offered "The $1,300 Mission to Fell ACORN/Duo in Sting Video Say Their Effort Was Independent" (link), an attempt by the WaPo to undercut the recent undercover reporting videos showing highly questionable activity by ACORN workers. Now, the WaPo has corrected a smear that Fears and Leonnig put in the 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.

The correction was most likely brought about by Powerline! (exclamation added for extra emphasis) which called out those reporters by name (powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024567.php). While it's easy - and fun! - to laugh at Powerline for being extremely doctrinaire GOP hacks who write one-hour-old-stubble-scratching articles and who don't approve comments showing how they're wrong, in this case they seem to have succeeded at making the WaPo look bad, at least to those who'll see the correction.

UPDATE: On second thought, calling what Fears and Leonig did a "racial smear" as the title used to do is only implicit and it's more accurate to simply call it playing the race card.

Tue, 09/22/2009 - 12:46 · · Importance: 3