Sometimes the News is Incredible

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Rex Smith: Sometimes the news is incredible

Meaning literally that it lacks credibility -- and yet it's real. For the mainstream media, a lesson to learn.

By REX SMITH, Albany Times Union

Many of us in the news business get a quick take on a tale by checking its teller. That may explain why the ACORN story was largely overlooked at first and why we may learn from it something about the changing nature of information transmittal.

In case you missed it: A couple of young conservative activists pretending to be a prostitute and her pimp secretly videotaped ACORN workers in several offices coaching the duo on how to evade taxes and avoid scrutiny. It was startling, to say the least.

The tapes prompted both houses of Congress to pass differing bills that bar the group from receiving federal funds. That was a sweet victory for the several conservative groups that have long viewed ACORN, a coalition of neighborhood groups with a national umbrella lobbying arm, as a haven of voter registration fraud and unethical political activity.

Most of us in the so-called legacy media came late to the story.

To suggest, as some have, that our handling of the story stems from a bias against conservative views is to miss a more complex and interesting point.

The ACORN video was first revealed on a blog run by Andrew Breitbart, a former associate of Matt Drudge. You remember Drudge: It was from the Drudge Report, a groundbreaking blog during the Clinton presidency, that we first heard that Monica Lewinsky had a blue dress harboring presidential DNA.

Many people didn't believe that at first, not just because it was mind-boggling; it was also because Drudge had little credibility. Although a lot of his reports on Clinton proved correct, he has been wrong so often since that nobody should take a Drudge claim at face value.

Breitbart's video got picked up by Fox News -- notably, by talk show host Glenn Beck, who urged viewers to call local newspapers and excoriate us for not reporting the story.

Journalists tend to be dispassionate about stories, and we value independence; the involvement of Beck, whose stock in trade is histrionics, lent little credence to the account.