Kill the Messenger Journalism Wound Up Killing ACORN and Maybe Obama Too

It's no wonder taxpayers are so angered in America in 2009. Of course, taxpayers have awakened, and they understand how the mainstream media uses kill the messenger journalism to destroy the lives of people like James O'Keefe. I believe Americans are no longer falling for this, and they will in time discover how deeply Obama's connection with ACORN goes and just how corrupt the Alinsky community organizers are. Andrew Breitbart is correct, the days of kill the messenger are over. O'Keefe is an American hero.

When you watch this video, think back to a couple days ago when Barack Obama himself said good journalism is "critical to the health of our democracy." And then went on to say, "I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding."

It's no wonder Obama wants this new citizen journalism gone. Citizen journalism killed ACORN, and we aren't going to let it get another dime of our money if we can help it. In time, we will also bring down Obama by connecting him to the corruption. It's only a matter of time.

Breigbart discusses how the O'Keefe plan became successful at Big Government, "Planting the Seeds: The Politicized Art Behind the ACORN Plan."

When filmmaker and provocateur James O’Keefe came to my office to show me the video of him and his friend, Hannah Giles, going to the Baltimore offices of ACORN – the nation’s foremost “community organizers” – dressed as a pimp and a prostitute and asking for – and getting – help for various illegal activities, he sought my advice. In the past, Mr. O’Keefe created brilliant social satire that rocked his college campus and even made its way on to the talk-radio and cable-news shows, but the magnitude of his latest adventure had the potential to rock the political establishment.

I was awed by Mr. O’Keefe’s guts and amazed by the footage, but explained that the mainstream media would try to kill this important and illuminating expose about a corrupt and criminal political racket, and that the well-funded political left would go into “war room” mode, with 25-year-old Mr. O’Keefe and 20-year-old cohort Miss Giles in the cross hairs. I felt I had a moral obligation to protect these young muckrakers from the left and from the media, and to devise a strategy that would force the media’s hand.

Once the American public saw with its own eyes the grotesque, common practices of ACORN’s housing offices, Mr. O’Keefe and Miss Giles could no longer be a legitimate focus of media scrutiny. Kill the messenger doesn’t work with the American people when they realize that the message is so devastating and honest. I think the video exposed the misuse of public funds and systemic manipulation of the tax code in the name of “helping the poor.”

If Mr. O’Keefe dumped the videos on YouTube, the political powers would have killed the expose before it got traction. I half-joked that he should secretly tape pitching the major television networks exclusive use of his videos for their nightly news broadcasts. But a simpler, less controversial method proved as fruitful.

I told him that in addition to launching his compelling and stylized Web videos, we needed to offer the full transcripts and audio to the public in the name of transparency, and to offer Fox News the full footage of each video before each was released.

We had to devise a plan that would force the media to see the evidence before they had enough time to destroy these two idealistic 20-something truth seekers. Mr. O’Keefe agreed to post the full audio and full transcript of his video experiences at BigGovernment.com. Thus was born a multimedia, multiplatform strategy designed to force the reluctant hands of ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post.