Manipulating the Public Agenda: Why ACORN Was in the News, and What the News Got Wrong
Using the controversy over the community group ACORN, this study illustrates the
way that the media help set the agenda for public debate, and frame the way that
debate is shaped. We describe how opinion entrepreneurs (primarily business and
conservative groups and individuals) set the story in motion as early as 2006, the
conservative echo chamber orchestrated its anti‐ACORN campaign in 2008, the
McCain‐Palin campaign picked it up, and the mainstream media reported its
allegations without investigating their truth or falsity. As a result, the relatively littleknown
community organization became the subject of a major news story in the 2008
U.S. presidential campaign, to the point where 82% of the respondents in an October
2008 national survey reported they had heard about ACORN.
• Although ACORN is involved in many community activities around the country,
including efforts to improve housing, wages, access to credit, and public education,
the dominant story frame about ACORN was “voter fraud.” The “voter fraud” frame
appeared in 55% of the 647 news stories about the community organization in 15
mainstream news organizations during 2007 and 2008. The news media stories about
ACORN were overwhelmingly negative, reporting allegations by Republicans and
conservatives.
• In October 2008, at the peak of the campaign season, negative attacks dominated the
news about ACORN:
76% of the stories focused on allegations of voter fraud
8.7% involved accusations that public funds were being funneled to ACORN
7.9% of the stories involved charges that ACORN is a front for registering
Democrats
3.1% involved blaming ACORN for the mortgage scandal
• The mainstream news media failed to fact‐check persistent allegations of “voter
fraud” despite the existence of easily available countervailing evidence. The media
also failed to distinguish allegations of voter registration problems from allegations of
actual voting irregularities. They also failed to distinguish between allegations of
wrongdoing and actual wrongdoing. For example:
82.8% of the stories about ACORN’s alleged involvement in voter fraud failed to
mention that actual voter fraud is very rare (only 17.2% did mention it)
80.3% of the stories about ACORN’s alleged involvement in voter fraud failed to
mention that ACORN was reporting registration irregularities to authorities, as
required to do by law
85.1% of the stories about ACORN’s alleged involvement in voter fraud failed to
note that ACORN was acting to stop incidents of registration problems by its
(mostly temporary) employees when it became aware of these problems
95.8% of the stories about ACORN’s alleged involvement in voter fraud failed to
provide deeper context, especially efforts by Republican Party officials to use
allegations of “voter fraud” to dampen voting by low‐income and minority
Americans, including the firing of U.S. Attorneys who refused to cooperate with
the politicization of voter fraud accusations – firings that ultimately led to the 61.4% of the stories about ACORN’s alleged involvement in voter fraud failed to
acknowledge that Republicans were trying to discredit Obama with an ACORN
“scandal”
• 47.8% of the news stories about ACORN in October 2008 linked the organization to
candidate Barack Obama, most of them seeking to discredit him and his campaign
through guilt‐by‐association.
• The media bias against ACORN was evident not only in its focus on allegations of voter
fraud but also in the language used to describe ACORN, such as leftist, left‐wing, front
(for Democrats), radical, activist, political, militant, and socialist.
• The attacks on ACORN originated with business groups and political groups that
opposed ACORN’s organizing work around living wages, predatory lending, and
registration of low‐income and minority voters. These groups created frames to
discredit ACORN that were utilized by conservative ”opinion entrepreneurs” within
the conservative “echo chamber” – publications, TV and radio talk shows, blogs and
websites, think tanks, and columnists – to test, refine, and circulate narrative frames
about ACORN. These conservative “opinion entrepreneurs” were successful in
injecting their perspective on ACORN into the mainstream media.
• Perhaps the peak moment in the attack on ACORN occurred at the presidential
debate between Obama and McCain on Oct. 15, 2008. Although not asked a
question about ACORN, McCain injected the issue on his own, saying: “We
need to know the full extent of Senator Obama’s relationship with ACORN,
who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in
voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.“
Clearly this statement was newsworthy. This study reveals, however, that
opinion entrepreneurs, the conservative echo chamber, and the mainstream
media had laid the groundwork for McCain’s attack on ACORN.
• Local newspapers, which were more likely to verify the actual voting conditions of
county election boards, were much less susceptible to the politicized “voter fraud”
frame than the national news media.
The ACORN Story. One of the biggest stories
