Los Angeles's NBC television affiliate must not have gotten the memo telling them that they should not utter the name of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), lest anyone reach the "wrong" conclusions.
NBC Los Angeles is the only media outlet I have found thus far to identify ACORN's presence in a story about a "disruptive display of disobedience" by members the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) at a school board meeting Tuesday (the story credit is to "Associated Press/NBC Los Angeles," but as you will see later, I found no AP story containing an ACORN reference).
Here is the story headline that the Google News crawler apparently originally found:
Look at how it changed.
Readers can decide after reading the NBC-LA story (HT Michelle Malkin), and looking at the videos at the link, whether the "mob" headline or the one that currently appears at the site is accurate, but it has to make you wonder what caused it to change:
Chanting Teachers Take Over Building
A school board meeting turned into a display of civil disobedience Tuesday as about 50 educators refused to leave, creating a brief standoff with police, who refused to make any arrests in the presence of media.
The members of ACORN and United Teachers Los Angeles -- all wearing bright red shirts -- entered the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education meeting on Tuesday afternoon, sat down and began chanting.
Police said the protesters were staging an illegal occupation of a public building. The district said no arrests would occur as long as members of media were in building.
UTLA President A.J. Duffy approached the speakers' lectern and told the board, "You know why we're here. You know I'm not leaving this rostrum. You know I'm going to keep talking."
As he spoke several teachers sat on the floor in front of the board and held up signs saying "Students lose when we lose teachers, No layoffs" as the crowd began chanting.
Board President Monica Garcia repeatedly asked Duffy to sit down, but he kept speaking. The microphone was turned off, but Duffy continued to speak and the chanting continued. Garcia then announced that the "disturbance has interrupted our meeting to the point where the orderly conduct of this meeting is not feasible."
The board took a short recess, then reconvened in a smaller meeting room, with the proceedings broadcast on television sets in the district's headquarters. Media and the public were allowed into the room on a rotating basis.
In the station's defense the captions under two of the videos at the link characterize the protesters as a "mob." I would suggest, first, that there was a lot more than "chanting" going on, and that ACORN's presence makes it at least a bit likely that it wasn't only "teachers" doing the chanting.
As for ACORN's involvement in the protest, these media outlets didn't note it in these linked stories:
- AFP -- "Los Angeles considers sacking 9,000 teachers"
- The Associated Press, as carried at SFgate.com and in a pre-meeting story at Google News
- The Los Angeles Times -- "L.A. Unified board OKs layoff notices to about 9,000 employees"
- LA Daily News -- "L.A. teachers protest, but school board votes to send layoff warnings"
A Google News Search on [ACORN "Los Angeles" "school board"] (typed as indicated between brackets) returns only the NBC-LA story.
This document found at Google (search on ACORN once you get to it) would seem to indicate that ACORN's support of UTLA goes back at least to 2005. Too bad the media in LA hasn't bothered to try to determine the strength of those connections for its readers.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
—Tom Blumer is president of a training and development company in Mason, Ohio, and is a contributing editor to NewsBusters
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RICO
March 11, 2009 - 15:10 ET by slickwillie2001If the history of ACORN and all their subsidiaries were known and could be written down, it would lead to a RICO investigation. Unfortunately that's not going to happen because they have too many friends in high places that are experts at playing the race-huckster card. They are the democratics' brownshirts.
Laying off teachers along
March 11, 2009 - 15:25 ET by SickofLibsLaying off teachers along with the rest of regular Americans?
But they have "TENURE!"
This surging acceptance of public disobedience is highly disturbing. What is more disturbing, though, is the lack of clamping down hard on it immediately. Why couldn't any arrests been made because 'the media' was present?
There is a word
March 11, 2009 - 15:27 ET by richb313There is a word that describes this and that word is COMPLICIT. Complicit, complicit, complicit. We need to keep repeating that word. The MSM is no longer just BIASED they are now complicit in the actions of ACORN as they refuse to tell the truth about them. It is one thing to color a story but now we are seeing the signs of outright fabrication through omission. That my friends in my humble opinion rises to COMPLICIT.
hey rich
March 11, 2009 - 15:48 ET by soosanyou didn't really say "color a story" did you. its the re-education camp for you.
At least it is camp
March 11, 2009 - 16:44 ET by richb313At least it is camp. Maybe it would give me a break from the daily depressing news.
It is past beyond sad what
March 11, 2009 - 16:03 ET by bigtimerIt is past beyond sad what has happened to California's school system, it used to be #1 decades ago with results for the best education in the country...look at what has happened in the last 3-4 decades.
To top it off...now we are forced via our tax-paying dollars to support ACORN through the Strangulation Bill they just passed, even though they used sister group names or whatever they classified it under as a Stimulus...yeah, this is stimulus alright....as Obama smiles.
I am not ignoring the importance if the blog post here whatsoever, unfortunately this goes with the tactics the left in the msm uses...
Omission, when convenient.
This of course should be everyones REAL CONCERN
March 11, 2009 - 17:36 ET by richb313You are right. I have lived in California in the 70's. The State of Californias Schools should be everyones real concern, however the concern is always for the poor teachers and educational administration an so on and not the students. It is always the students who get short changed. If the Teachers Union does not support a way to properly evaluate the effectiveness of teachers adn that a teachers pay should be based on that criteria then they do not support education. Teachers Unions only support Teachers and protect them to the detriment of this nations children.
Real education is hard. It is meant nto be hard. No sense of real accomplishment can ever be derived from doing something easy. President Kennedy said it best when he challenged the Nation to put a Man on the Moon by the end of the decade.
"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not only because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."
At least JFK understood it was the challenge that was important. The Challenge was also a measure of the outcome. If you expect less you will always get less. What has happened to our Can Do American Spirit that President Reagan was able to rekindle in dark times in our past.
It's the constant cover-up
March 11, 2009 - 21:50 ET by TN MomIt's the constant cover-up by MSM; the constant glossing over, omissions, and outright lies that will eventually be the downfall of media.
Bernie Goldberg is right- Media does not care. Media does not care about their viewers complaints about untruthful reporting. Media does not care that we see their bias. I HOPE THE MEDIA FAILS. Soon.
Oh, and ACORN, as a personal friend of the president, is getting bolder each day; breaking in homes...staging protest at school meetings in their red shirts. Shame on those teachers for sitting along with ACORN, the group under federal investigation for voter registration fraud. I do not want them teaching MY children!
The Agenda
March 12, 2009 - 08:18 ET by ChattychitoIs not to tell the truth and report the news. the media sole agenda is to manipulate the people to do as they want. the sad result is many Americans allow themselves to be puppets in the MSM world stage.
"A man who doesn't borrow from the brains of others proves he has no brains of his own." CH Spurgeon