The first story that I found was on: http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5AC4Z820091113

This story was a light summary of the possible future of Major Nidal Malik Hasan. It described the paralysis incurred from the four gunshots he received at the hands of authorities in order to subdue him, as well as the charged against him. In the article is also a statement that Obama has to review how U.S. intelligence agencies handled information received from him, as well as the information proving that he has had contact with an Al Qaeda Islamist.

The second story is:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091112/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_fort_hood_shooting_charges/print

This article just covers the charges being placed against Major Nidal Malik Hasan. And it also describes the incident and states how many were wounded in this rampage, there are a total of 13 deaths and 29 wounded. There is not too much information given in this article.

The last article I found is:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/11/06/fort.hood.suspect/index.html

This article is the best of all three. It discusses Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s mental health as well as signs that he gave to his family that were related to the incident. He told them that he wanted to leave the military ever since the 9/11 attacks also that he did not feel safe in the military.  They stated that the day of his attacks he showed no real signs, other than he seemed extra religious that day, he asked member of the military if they were going to attend Fridays’ prayers.  Things that had angered him were they removed the muslim prayers from the doors all over the base. And the respect for the people and the religion had diminished throughout the base. People that were on the base said this could have lead to the attacks, they believe people don’t snap all of a sudden. Its  an accumulation of feelings over a period of time that can cause an individual to feel certain ways; this can cause an action of at times immeasurable and unimaginable feelings.

Clark Hoyt has been doing his own investigation into the ACORN scandal. He has published two articles based on the incidents, “Tuning In Too Late” was the first article, published September 27, 2009; the second article is “Notes About Bias, From Opposite Points of View”, published October 4, 2009.

In the first article he discusses how Fox News has done an investigation into the ACORN incident, their investigation was done by sending a man dressed as a pimp and a woman dressed as a prostitute into an ACORN facility. The man and woman asked questions about cheating on taxes and running a brothel staffed by underage girls. The thing that shocked people was that they were given information on how to do these things. The people were so shocked that they acted as if they never heard this when it was brought up to the public.

In the two Clark Hoyt pieces he has the same thesis actually. The second article “Notes about “Bias from Opposite Points of View” is merely a follow-up of the first one entitled “Tuning in Too late”. In the first article he discusses the issues of Acorn and how politics play a role in trying to cover up some of the issues that Acorn is currently facing, he also discusses new reports done from different news vendors; Fox and Associated Press. He supports his thesis by stating examples of what occurred in the Fox publication versus the Associated Press publication, where Fox did a deeper investigation about why the community association Acorn was being checked out. This investigation included videos that were taken at the Acorn office in Brooklyn, New York; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Another point that was brought up in the first article is how this Acorn scandal was forged, and that the videos taken were set up and scripted, yet the employees seen in the video were all fired. Also that there was information withheld throughout the entire time since the investigation began on September 16^th, the information was said to be able to affect Obama’s Presidency. A lot of information found on Acorn was relative to the prostitution and the movement of illegal immigrants across borders. An employee was even caught telling the Fox News investigator that posed a pimp how to hide the money.

In the second article “Notes about Bias from Opposite Points of View”, he allowed readers to voice their feelings about everything that Acorn had been through in the press and on many blogging sites.  Some people had opinions form varying points of view. Some people even added information that wasn’t present in the beginning of the investigations with Acorn. And some said the information that was there was very bias and needed to be cleared up. The New York Times has a policy that states untrue information cannot be published, nor can bias information, which explains why this was in the public editor column of the paper.

I based my analysis on articles found on:

 http://biggovernment.com/

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/census-severs-relationship-with-acorn.html, http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/09/14/dan-gainor-acorn-media-ignore/.

                The articles that I found on all three of these sites gave a lot of information, but in my opinion two of the three just covered what it stated it would. It covered the economic area of ACORN, the end to the government funding, and big government just gave four articles of the same thing, issues with ACORN and the government. This basically explained the economics once again, and the repetitiveness almost made me give up.

                I then stumbled upon the article on foxnews.com; it covered everything in the ACORN situation, from every individual incident that occurred throughout the nation, and even summarized the events. This made it very simple for me to get a well-rounded story of everything that ACORN was going through.  This article was published September 14, 2009 it gave information that wasn’t published by other news mediums until now. I personally believe this is the best ACORN article on the web.

                I feel that we cannot define whether or not an association should be shut down just because there is a bad rap discovered in a short period of time. Even if it has been going on for a very long time, I’m a fan of utilitarianism. The greater good for the greater number of people, if ACORN has done some negative things, we are going to always look at it like “WOW!” because as humans we look for the more eye catching thing that happens. Sometimes that is the negative, but we must also weigh out the positive that they have done for people, how many homes they have helped people find, and how many jobs they have created. And if we then still feel like they haven’t done anything good to outshine the bad, well shut it down.

There are four known and stated ways to defend against Libel claims, Consent, Truth, Privilege, and/or Opinion Versus Fact. Consent means that an individual gives permission to the publication company which means that an individual cannot later try to sue for libel. Truth is what has actually happened and the cold hard facts, and must be proven but not by the publication but by the individual suing. Privilege varies depending on state and country, one thing that remains the same though is that the media is protected when publishing official public proceedings and reports even if the information reported turns out to later be false as long as the information is fair and accurate at the time of their reporting. Lastly, Opinion versus fact this states that statements of pure opinion cannot be libelous, the way to for a statement to be considered an opinion is if it can be proven to be true or false. True opinions cannot be proven to be either.
These things are good to know since I have a few published works of my own. I have written articles for school papers at every level, also have had poems published. This allows me to know my limitations of publication, and what the first amendment does not allow me to do. The issue that would bother me though is what if I was a celebrity? It would mean that people have the right to publish whatever they want about me? But if I do that to them I can be sued through a violation of libel, this shows to me that libel is not a two way street. It allows privileges to the general public but not to the celebrities and the same thing for government officials. Libel still works for the public though. Libel and the first amendment in my opinion work as a system of checks and balances. First amendment checks, while Libel balances.