COMM 317: Media critic discusses ACORN videos / and Fri. assignment

James Rainey, who writes the "On the Meida" column for The Los Angeles Times, questions the ethics of the ACORN videos shot by two conservative activists out to bring down the community organizing agency.

Here's the gist of Rainey's column in today's LA Times:

... Should news organizations be using this kind of subterfuge to get stories? If so, when? And when such hidden-camera theatrics come over the transom, how closely should they be scrutinized before they are thrown open to the public?

The answers -- surprise, surprise -- are not so simple.

Nothing terribly surprising in Rainey's analysis:

No mitigating factors can explain away the behavior of pathetically accommodating ACORN workers (some since terminated) captured on some of the video. Here's how to conceal your prostitution income! How about cutting your taxes by claiming those underage immigrants as dependents! Not pretty.

Yet no legitimate news organization can claim editorial integrity if it merely regurgitates information from political activists without subjecting the material to serious scrutiny.

And that, he said, the media did not do. Fair enough, at least insofar as Fox News is concerned. But is he implying political activists don't have ethical standards?

If they were members of the Public Relations Society of America, they would. Let's look at the PRSA code of ethics today and see how the ACORN shooters would stack up against the code. (If you suspect this long windup is a cheesy way of getting into the professional ethics codes, you would be right.) For Friday read Chapter 2 in Patterson and Wilkins.