Acorn Scandal: “Mainstream” Media Corruption Not New

The "mainstream" media's refusal to discuss Acorn's criminal conduct demonstrates conclusively how corrupt the media really is. This is not news to me. I figured this out more than 27 years ago when I caught ABC news involved in a propaganda campaign against Ronald Reagan.

I was in Greece, with the U.S. Air Force for a couple of months during the early 80s. The U.S. Airbase was an extension of the Athens Airport. About 50 Greeks worked on the base as cooks, janitors, etc.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was raging across Europe. Enormous marches were being held in places like London, Paris, and Berlin against Reagan’s plans to stage short range ballistic missiles in Europe.

We were staying in a hotel in Glyfada, which was a suburb of Athens. The Air Force delivered VHS tapes of the ABC News. We’d typically get them 3 days after the original broadcasts.

One day, the Greeks who worked on the base went on strike. They went on strike for all of the usual reasons – more pay, better benefits, etc. They formed a small picket line in front of the airbase. A few people from the smaller and nuttier of the two communist parties joined them. We were told not to go to work for a couple of days.

Three days later (after the strike was done and we were all back to work) we received a VHS tape of the ABC News, where Frank Reynolds was reporting that the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament staged a massive anti-American protest in Athens, which shut down the airbase. They showed footage of what seemed to be hundreds of thousands of Greeks marching in the streets. The video was not labeled “file footage”.

We were all sitting there scratching our heads wondering what the heck was going on. We asked an employee of the hotel to look at the tape. He said that this was a video of the protests against the Greek dictatorship from about 10 years earlier.

It was very obvious to us what was really happening -- ABC News was engaged in a propaganda campaign against President Reagan and his plans to stand up to the Soviet Union.

Yesterday, when asked why he wasn't reporting on the Acorn Scandals, ABC News Anchor Charlie Gibson claimed that he hadn't even heard about them. In other words, nothing has changed with the media's selective and politically biased "reporting" in 27 years.