Drew Griffin is getting a lot of kudos on the right for his reporting on ACORN, which regularly omits relevant information. In his first report, he failed to distinguish between voter fraud and registration fraud, and he neglected to mention that ACORN is required by law in Indiana to turn in all of its forms, whether they appear to be fraudulent or not. Today, the McCain campaign is sending around more evidence of Griffin's journalistic malpractice, which relies heavily on the bet that reporters don't own dictionaries. In the past, this has proven to be a pretty safe bet. The quote at the head of the e-mail is:
Now, today I'm told that the Obama campaign is saying that we may have paid them some money for canvassing, but in earlier e-mails with the Obama campaign, they did say that they paid them $800,000, a subsidiary of ACORN in the primary to garner votes.
Canvassing, by definition, is "garnering votes." This is like saying "Adam said he was drinking a Diet Coke, but in reality he was downing an artificially sweetened carbonated beverage owned by the Coca Cola Company." Griffin paraphrased what the Obama campaign said and tried to present it as an inconsistency.
Likewise, in order to increase the aura of intrigue, Griffin says Obama represented ACORN without noting that he was accompanied by the United States Department of Justice.
That's just bad reporting.
--A. Serwer
