News Media Repeated Unverified Voter-Fraud Allegations Against Acorn, Study Concludes

The mainstream news media repeatedly echoed unverified allegations and distortions when covering charges by conservative commentators of voter fraud against Acorn, the community-organizing group, during the 2008 presidential campaign, according to a new study by university scholars.

The study, which analyzed 647 stories in 15 major news outlets and additional stories in three local newspapers, found that “the news media agenda is easily permeated by persistent conservative media campaigns, even when there is little or no truth to the story.”

The analysis was conducted by Peter Dreier, director of the Urban and Environmental Policy Center at Occidental College, in Los Angeles, and Christopher Martin, professor of journalism at the University of Northern Iowa, in Cedar Falls.

Acorn, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is now under fire because employees were videotaped giving tax advice to a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute. The House and Senate have voted to cut off federal funds to the group.

The academic study found that news-media coverage of the voter-fraud charges failed to distinguish between problems with registering voters and actual voting irregularities, which are rare. It also found that 80 percent of the stories failed to mention that Acorn was reporting registration irregularities to the authorities; 85 percent failed to report that the group was acting to stop incidents of registration problems; and 96 percent failed to provide deeper context, especially about efforts by Republican Party officials to use voter-fraud allegations to dampen voting by low-income and minority Americans.

The report, “Manipulating the Public Agenda: Why Acorn was the News, and What the News Got Wrong,” is available on the Occidental College and University of Northern Iowa Web sites.