Yet some in the media are still treating Breitbart seriously. Washington Post ombud Andrew Alexander wrote a column on April 11 taking his cue from Breitbart's latest effort, which is to attempt to cast doubt on the widely reported racist incidents at Tea Party protests at the Capitol on March 20, the day of the final health reform vote. Two black Democratic representatives--Andre Carson and John Lewis--say they were called "nigger." Breitbart says they're liars--it never happened. And he's posted videos of the protests with no audible racist invective.

There's just one problem; as Associated Press reporter Jesse Washington pointed out (4/13/10), the videos Breitbart is touting were shot after the incidents took place.

So a guy who pulled off one very successful media hoax is trying to pull off another one. You'd think that after being burned on the ACORN story, journalists wouldn't pay much attention to Breitbart. But not Andrew Alexander, who closed his column noting that Breitbart's efforts

may be publicity-seeking theater. But it's part of widespread conservative claims that mainstream media, including the Post, swallowed a huge fabrication. The incidents are weeks old, but it's worth assigning Post reporters to find the truth. After all, a civil rights legend is being called a liar.

There are lots of things reporters should be looking into. This is not one of them. Especially considering that the guy leading this campaign pulled off a "huge fabrication" of his own--which was "swallowed" whole by outlets like the Washington Post. Alexander's right that Lewis, a civil rights legend, is being called a liar. But the charge is coming from a liar. If Alexander is truly concerned that his paper has published fabrications, he could start by calling for an investigation of the paper's coverage of Breitbart's ACORN hoax-- especially since Alexander criticized the Post for not covering the ACORN story enough.

And some in the media agreed. Washington Post ombud Andrew Alexander (9/20/09) criticized his paper for running just two early stories about the recent scandals involving the group. The problem was that the paper apparently doesn't pay enough attention to the concerns of the right--a feeling shared by the paper's executive editor, who called for more coverage of the group.

Over at the New York Times, public editor Clark Hoyt reached a similar conclusion (9/27/09), writing that when the paper misses such stories, it can "wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself." The Times was clueless, apparently, because they ran just one story about the anti-ACORN campaign, a piece that upset conservatives because it looked at the issue as a political matter--explaining that the videos and talk radio brouhaha was a way for the right to try and do harm to a group it opposes, and to try and connect ACORN to the Obama White House.  This is undoubtedly true. But editors at the Times, like the folks at the Post, offered the same self-criticism: We don't pay enough attention to the complaining of conservatives.

Sure enough, only a few days later, readers would see how this was changing. On October 6, the Post ran a piece on Republicans going after the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, for their ties to ACORN. The union has paid ACORN for various services over the years. A nearly identical story appeared in the next day's New York Times (10/7/09). So the completely-blown-out-of-proportion case against ACORN has now become a drive against SEIU, with no apparent news hook other than the fact that right-wing Republicans are trying to make this non-story into a story--and succeeding.

I guess editors at the Times and Post can rest easy knowing that they're not ignoring the whining of the right-wing.