Media Accused of Ignoring Election Irregularities
Two weeks after Election Day, explosive allegations about a media coverup are percolating.
There's the widely circulated e-mail about a CBS producer who complained that a news industry "lock-down" has prevented journalists from investigating voting problems that cropped up on Nov 2. There's the rumor that MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, who has devoted serious air time to discussing Election Day irregularities, was fired for broaching the topic. There's the assertion by Bev Harris, executive director of Black Box Voting Inc., that she had received calls from network employees saying they had been told to lay off the sensitive subject of voting fraud.
In the days after Nov. 2, the Internet was abuzz with charges from partisans that voting irregularities might have cost John F. Kerry the White House.
With some media outlets moving swiftly to debunk the notion that the election had been stolen by the Republicans, the press itself has come under scrutiny, accused of everything from a conspiracy of silence to a collective passivity about pursuing voting irregularities.
"The mainstream media is not treating this as an important story overall," said Steve Rendall, senior analyst at the liberal media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. "The mainstream media has largely treated the story as some crazy Internet story." At the same time, Rendall acknowledged: "There has been excess in the way stuff has flown around the Internet and e-mail lists."
Media Matters for America, a liberal media monitoring organization, posted an item on its website recently that cited several stories about faulty voting equipment in Ohio that did not generate much media interest. David Brock, the organization's president, said in an interview: "I haven't seen anything that is suggesting that further probing of the issue would change the results of the election." But he added that "there are some irregularities, and I would imagine some reader and viewer interest. . . . It seems that there should have been somewhat more coverage of this. There was all this pressure and buildup and very little follow-up."
TomPaine.com, a liberal website that collects news and commentary about public policy issues, has posted several analyses arguing that Kerry was hurt in Ohio by a shortage of voting machines, as well as by discarded votes that came disproportionately from minority precincts. The website's executive editor, Alexandra Walker, said her organization leaves the conspiracy theories surrounding the media's behavior to "the blogosphere."
Read the full story here.
There's the widely circulated e-mail about a CBS producer who complained that a news industry "lock-down" has prevented journalists from investigating voting problems that cropped up on Nov 2. There's the rumor that MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, who has devoted serious air time to discussing Election Day irregularities, was fired for broaching the topic. There's the assertion by Bev Harris, executive director of Black Box Voting Inc., that she had received calls from network employees saying they had been told to lay off the sensitive subject of voting fraud.
In the days after Nov. 2, the Internet was abuzz with charges from partisans that voting irregularities might have cost John F. Kerry the White House.
With some media outlets moving swiftly to debunk the notion that the election had been stolen by the Republicans, the press itself has come under scrutiny, accused of everything from a conspiracy of silence to a collective passivity about pursuing voting irregularities.
"The mainstream media is not treating this as an important story overall," said Steve Rendall, senior analyst at the liberal media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. "The mainstream media has largely treated the story as some crazy Internet story." At the same time, Rendall acknowledged: "There has been excess in the way stuff has flown around the Internet and e-mail lists."
Media Matters for America, a liberal media monitoring organization, posted an item on its website recently that cited several stories about faulty voting equipment in Ohio that did not generate much media interest. David Brock, the organization's president, said in an interview: "I haven't seen anything that is suggesting that further probing of the issue would change the results of the election." But he added that "there are some irregularities, and I would imagine some reader and viewer interest. . . . It seems that there should have been somewhat more coverage of this. There was all this pressure and buildup and very little follow-up."
TomPaine.com, a liberal website that collects news and commentary about public policy issues, has posted several analyses arguing that Kerry was hurt in Ohio by a shortage of voting machines, as well as by discarded votes that came disproportionately from minority precincts. The website's executive editor, Alexandra Walker, said her organization leaves the conspiracy theories surrounding the media's behavior to "the blogosphere."
Read the full story here.
posted by Pamela J. Leavey at 11:51 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home