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Entrapment as Journalism

In September 2009 conservative activists Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe released a video of ACORN employees allegedly giving the pair advice on how to run a prostitution ring and avoid taxes, among other activities. This led to a massive backlash against ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a network of organizations that focused on voter registration and housing issues for those in low- and middle-income neighborhoods. This “scoop” led to a move to defund ACORN at both the federal and state level. A Republican legislator in Florida said, “The gig is up for ACORN.” He was right.
ACORN is now defunct, thanks to the effort following the release of Giles and O’Keefe’s tapes. Those on the right held this up as a victory as ACORN was defunded and eventually disbanded while the left bemoaned the tactics used by Giles and O’Keefe, namely the heavy editing employed by the two. Numerous investigations discovered no criminal wrongdoing by the ACORN employees.
Fast forward to Wednesday, when Buffalo Beast blogger Ian Murphy called Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, posing as billionaire conservative David Koch. In a 20 minute conversation, Walker said some damning things, most notably admitting that he and his staff had considered sending “trouble makers” into the crowds of protesters in Madison. Walker’s fate, unlike ACORN’s, has yet to be decided.
But the one thing that sticks out about all of this is the inanity of it. The ACORN video was stupid, as was the reactionary backlash that followed. Calling someone up and pretending to be a conservative billionaire in order to try to entrap a governor into saying something stupid is, for lack of a better word, stupid.

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