MSM, meet NCM. Having agreed with Howard Kurtz (see post below) that Fox News doesn't need the MainStream Media anymore to push a story forward, as demonstrated in the Van Jones case, let's add another new force on the political landscape--call it the NCM, for New Conservative Media--to the list of game-changers. The Cable Gamer expects that NCM stories, such as "ACORN-gate," to force more resignations and scandals in the future. Which is to say, eventually the MSM will have to cover this new story, too.
ACORN-gate refers to the story that everyone--everyone who watches Fox, at least--knows by now: Conservative activists Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe went undercover, in costume (that's them, pictured above) to see if various ACORN functionaries would cooperate with outright criminality. And a number of them--apparently, in DC, Baltimore and now, we learn, New York City--were willing to do so.
It's quite a story, what the ACORN-ians were willing to do. In the words of Dan Gainor, writing for Fox News, "This story has everything you could ever want – corruption, sleazy actions at tax-funded organizations, firings, government ties, sex, hookers. It is a network news director’s dream. Imagine the ratings. But almost no one is covering it." [emphasis added]
Indeed. Gainor is right: almost no one in the MSM is covering it. But Fox is; see this trend piece by Joshua Rhett Miller, which suggests that Congressional Republicans, including Steve King of Iowa, Darrell Issa of California, and Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland, are going to start turning up the heat on all this corruption.
Undoubtedly, the MSM will continue to ignore this story, but just as surely, Fox will stay on it. And the NCM will stay on it, too.
And so Howard Kurtz will eventually be writing about this story, too, noting how the MSM came to it only belatedly. And reluctantly.
