Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity

The conservative media has a hit list, and, as you know, ACORN is its most recent target. Right-wing talkers like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity aren't going to give up on their own. That's why we have to fight them at every turn, exposing the profound hypocrisy and total lack of journalistic standards that define their so-called reporting. We need your support to keep up the fight:

In a new study released yesterday, Media Matters for America methodically exposes how both Beck and Hannity have spent years obsessively attacking ACORN under the guise of exposing corruption at an organization that receives government funding. Consider the following staggering numbers:

On Beck's and Hannity's respective television programs combined, ACORN was mentioned 1,502 times between May 8, 2006, and September 18, 2009. More than 1,500 times. Remember that ACORN has not been charged with any wrongdoing. Not only that, but the organization has been awarded just $53 million in federal funding over the past 15 years -- an average of $3.5 million per year.

Compare that to the coverage Beck and Hannity gave to Jack Abramoff, former Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), Blackwater, Halliburton, and Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR) -- stories of well-documented political scandals and of corruption by companies that have received thousands of times more money from the government than ACORN has in the past 15 years. Abramoff and Ney were involved in influence peddling corruption that reached the highest levels of the Bush administration and Republican-controlled Congress. The aforementioned military contractors have all been involved in major controversies and scandals, some of which reportedly contributed to the deaths of U.S. troops, contractors, and Iraqi civilians alike. Combined, these contractors have been awarded at least $25 billion in contracts since 2001.

So how many times were these names mentioned on Beck's and Hannity's programs?

Abramoff and Ney: 62 times
Blackwater/Xe: four times
Halliburton/KBR: 43 times

In other words, Beck's and Hannity's programs combined were approximately 35 times more likely to discuss ACORN than any of the military contractors. They were also 24 times more likely to discuss ACORN than Abramoff and Ney.

Beck and Hannity have been willing to run with any story that accuses ACORN of corruption, even if the accusations remain unproven and the details were gathered using ethically and legally questionable tactics. But as we show in our study, these two hosts didn't lift a finger to report on the massive cases of corruption involving prominent military contractors and Republicans in Congress. This is agenda-driven journalism of the most transparent sort, and we need to continue to fight back by exposing their hypocrisy with hard facts