Perhaps you wonder why the LNS is so hard on the
NYTwits (i.e. the New York Times)? Perhaps you wonder
why the LNS refers to it as the "Newspaper of
Revision"? Our contempt for the NYTwits began in the
struggle for Fraudida and its aftermath. There are
numerous, painful instances in which the NYTwits went
out of their way to twist facts, lose facts, miscount,
even contradict themselves within their own stories,
and in all ways spin away Al Gore's clear victory (no,
the margin wasn't within a few hundred votes), here is
JUST ONE of them...Now as the Bush cabal grips on
power weakens, the NYTwits write an editorial on a
constitutional crime that they refused to acknowledge
while they sat staring at the evidence...It's the
Media, Stupid...
Danny Schecter, www.gregpalast.com: “What? “ he shouted at
me on the phone.” You must be kidding.” He couldn’t
believe it because the New York Times refused to carry
the story at the time when it might have done some
good. It didn’t even report on the Civil Rights
Commission’s findings it references in the editorial,
only on Republican OBJECTIONS to those findings. You
would think that the “MASSIVE PURGE” they cite in 2004
might have been news fit to print back in 2000. The
Washington Post carried Greg’s article on the subject
but not until June 2001. The NATION ran it and
followups earlier. CBS News wouldn’t run it, Greg was
told by a staffer, because Harris office denied it.
Huh?
Thwart the Theft of a Second Presidential Election,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
NEW YORK TIMES REPORTS ILLEGAL FLORIDA VOTE PURGE ...THREE YEARS AFTER KILLING STORY
MediaChannel.org
Monday, February 16, 2004
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The New York Times has uncovered Katherine Harris'
wipe out of thousands of voters ... only three years
after killing the story exposed by the BBC TV and the
Guardian. Here, 'News Dissector' Schechter, formerly
of ABC's 20/20, asks how the Times could editorialize
on a story they never ran in the first place. And note
the Times still can't bring itself to say that the
color of illegally purged voters is ... Black.
by Danny Schechter
The New York Times lead editorial Sunday was about
"How America Doesn’t Vote." It featured proposals for
many reforms to guarantee Americans the right to vote
and to have that vote counted. Its lead paragraph has
as its second sentence:
”In 2000, the American public saw in Katherine
Harris’s massive purge eligible voters in Florida, how
easy it is for registered voters to lose their rights
by bureaucratic fiat.” The editorial goes on to quote
the US Civil Rights commission’s findings documenting
how people falsely designated as felons were struck
from the polls.”
When I read this, I called investigative journalist
Greg Palast to read it to him. Greg appeared in
Counting on Democracy, a film I directed on the voting
debacle in Florida. He was the first top journalist to
report on the voter fraud, but not in the United
States, oh no, but on the BBC in England.
“What? “ he shouted at me on the phone.” You must be
kidding.” He couldn’t believe it because the New York
Times refused to carry the story at the time when it
might have done some good. It didn’t even report on
the Civil Rights Commission’s findings it references
in the editorial, only on Republican OBJECTIONS to
those findings. You would think that the “MASSIVE
PURGE” they cite in 2004 might have been news fit to
print back in 2000. The Washington Post carried Greg’s
article on the subject but not until June 2001. The
NATION ran it and followups earlier. CBS News wouldn’t
run it, Greg was told by a staffer, because Harris
office denied it. Huh?
The whole sorid story of big media response to his
findings appears in Palast’s book “The Best Democracy
Money Can Buy” and was carried first on Mediachannel.
This is so strange. Remember the heavily hyped media
“review” of the balloting? The New York Times was one
of the key newspapers in the consortium. The findings
were delayed and delayed, and then reported in such a
confusing manner that you would need an MIT degree in
linguistics to puzzle out what it was saying. An
airplane crash that day knocked it out of the news.
Later, the New York Times’ own investigative reporter
who supervised the media review told me on camera—and
it is in the film—that Al Gore won.
Does any of this make sense? A top reporter
challenging the main frame of the story as published,
and an editorial three plus years later citing, as
alarming and as fact, a “Massive” purge that it never
reported or explained. One more thing, Greg noted they
are still not making clear that most of those who were
purged were black.
And, natch, likely Gore voters. Surprise. Surprise.
Reprinted with permission from MediaChannel.org. To
see the BBC-TV report on the purge of Black voters, go
to www.GregPalast.com. Go to the left column on the
home page to link marked "BBC TV Theft of the
Presidency." Subscribe to Palast's writings at
www.GregPalast.com.