Other Than the Imputation of Racism, the Story Was Accurate

Yesterday the Washington Post published the following correction of a Friday story: This article about the community organizing group ACORN incorrectly said that a conservative journalist targeted the organization for hidden-camera videos partly because its voter-registration drives bring Latinos and African Americans to the polls. Although ACORN registers people mostly from those groups, the maker of the videos, James E. O'Keefe, did not specifically mention them. The Associated Press, which repeated the Post's claim, then issued a correction of its own: In a Sept. 19 story about the community organizing group ACORN, The Associated Press, based on an account in The Washington Post, erroneously quoted a conservative journalist saying he targeted the organization for hidden-camera videos because its voter-registration drives bring minority voters to the polls. The Washington Post on Tuesday printed a correction about the quote. Although ACORN registers people mostly from those groups, the maker of the videos, James E. O'Keefe, did not specifically mention minorities, the newspaper said. The Post's story has two bylines, and newspapers traditionally do not identify which editors work on which stories, so there is no way to know for sure where the claim that O'Keefe was racially motivated came from. But it seems a safe surmise that the source is employed by the Washington Post.   Best of the Web Today from The Wall Street Journal

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