For nearly two decades, Pew Research has conducted an annual scientific poll measuring Americans' views of media accuracy and bias. The 2009 results were released this week and it comes as no surprise to most conservatives that just 29% of Americans "say that news organizations generally get the facts straight". This compares to the results for the same question nearly 25 years ago when 55% said that "news stories were accurate".

Also of interest this year is the criticism that 60% of those surveyed believe that national news organizations are politically biased. This view of our national news gathering organizations is of particular interest since, according to the recent survey, "[D]emocratic criticism of the news media has grown by double-digits since 2007". Welcome to my world.

Of the national news organizations, Pew Research found the largest credibility gap occurred when the pollsters asked questions about the New York Times. "Although most Americans are not familiar with the Times to express an opinion, Republicans view the New York Times negatively by a margin of nearly two-to-one, (31% - 16%) while Democrats view it positively by an almost five-to-one margin (39% - 8%)."

So, it was with great interest when I read an article in yesterday's Star Tribune, reprinted from the New York Times and written by Scott Shane regarding the recent calamities surrounding ACORN, a nationwide group of community organizers that, amongst their many programs, offers housing counseling in 24 states. According to the New York Times, the problems with ACORN aren't happening because some of their employees appear to tacitly encourage tax evasion, prostitution, government fraud, and child sexual exploitation. Instead, the problems with ACORN stem from a vast right-wing conspiracy. Mr. Shane wrote that "[C]onservatives believe they have hit upon a winning formula for such attacks: mobilizing people to dig up dirt, trumpeting it on talk radio and television, prompting Congress to weight in and demanding action from the Obama administration." Is he kidding?

In case you haven't seen the video, two students posed as a pimp and a prostitute. They visited several ACORN offices with hidden cameras and secretly recorded the dramatic and often illegal advice offered by ACORN employees. These explosive videos exposed ACORN, a group that has received more than $53 million in funding from the federal government in the past 15 years in addition to the money they receive indirectly through states and local communities that distribute federal block grant funds, as an organization that had employees who did not discourage clients from breaking the law, no matter how corrupt and immoral their plans were.

We learned about this scandal not from the New York Times or any of the national news organizations but instead from two college kids with a camera.

The problem isn't with the college kids who visited ACORN housing offices across the country with hidden cameras. The true problem was with ACORN employees who appeared to counsel prospective homeowners on how to shield illegal and immoral activities from the authorities.

Scandal is nothing new to ACORN. They received scads of contributions from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) yet were "sanctioned by the National Labor Relations Board in 2003 for illegally firing workers trying to organize a union". Earlier this month, 11 ACORN workers in Florida were accused by prosecutors in Florida of falsifying a significant number of voter registration applications. And several national ACORN board members were booted from the organization after they demanded an audit of the organization's finances.

ACORN has fired four of the employees caught on tape dispensing illegal advice. Yet where is the outrage about their activities? And better yet, where is the follow up investigation from the New York Times not to mention every local newspaper in 24 states, including Minnesota, where ACORN has offices?

We won't see any of these investigations. No, instead the New York Times will continue to blame conservatives. As Scott Shane wrote in yesterday's article, this ACORN scandal is "the latest scalp claimed by those on the right who hope to weaken the Obama administration by attacking its allies and appointees they view as leftist."

And they wonder why we think they are biased.