Zack Roth highlights this part of the Harshbarger report on ACORN, which discusses the videos that caused them so much trouble. The Harshbarger report, while conceding ACORN employees acted unprofessionally, accuses the makers of manipulating their content. Here's the example Roth points out:
The videos that have been released appear to have been edited, in some cases substantially, including the insertion of a substitute voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O'Keefe's and Ms. Giles's comments, which makes it difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding. A comparison of the publicly available transcripts to the released videos confirms that large portions of the original video have been omitted from the released versions.
The incident in question is described elsewhere in the report:
In San Diego, the ACORN employee who met with the videographers does not speak English as his first language. His colleagues usually converse with him in Spanish. In the released video, his participation amounts mostly to nodding or saying “OK.” It is difficult to determine what this employee is responding to because the videographers statements are obscured by a voiceover inserted later. At other points, he attempted to take pictures of the videographers with his cell phone. Following the interview, he called a relative in the National City police department to report the incident.
The report concludes that, "[a] comparison of the publicly available transcripts to the released videos confirms that large portions of the original video have been omitted from the released versions. To date, the videographers have declined or ignored our interview requests."
-- A. Serwer
