The power of persistent blogging

by David Safier

At this moment, Brad Friedman of Bradblog is my hero. He's a long time, ardent supporter of election integrity and election reform who has done more to bring the topic to national attention than anyone I know of.

But this isn't about election integrity. It's about ACORN.

You all know about the video of a supposed pimp and his supposed prostitute going into ACORN offices and getting employees on camera saying embarrassing things. What idiots the ACORN people must have been to fall for someone in that ridiculous pimp getup!

He was wearing that ridiculous getup, right?

Wrong. He walked into the offices as a clean cut guy saying the woman he was with was a prostitute, and he wanted to help her out. But since he was wearing the hidden camera, you never saw him in the video, only in a short piece filmed out on the streets wearing that ridiculous outfit.

The NY Times reported he was wearing the getup in the ACORN offices. Friedman has launched a fierce, daily campaign on his blog to make the Times admit it got the story wrong. It refused, until today.

The Times' Public Editor wrote in a column today,

. . . I am satisfied that The Times was wrong on this point, and I have been wrong in defending the paper’s phrasing. Editors say they are considering a correction.

That doesn't make the whole case against statements by ACORN employees fall apart, but it indicates that the people who perpetrated this stunt were also perpetrating a hoax on the media.

Others have been writing the Times about the poor reporting on the ACORN story, but I'm convinced Friedman's persistence is what made the difference.

Let's hear it for the positive power of blogging when it's used honestly and intelligently.