With a rather mild slap on the wrist, Columbia Journalism Review suggests in its Sep/Oct issue, in an un-bylined editorial, that the national media failed to do their job in reporting on the disasterously irregular 2004 Ohio Presidential Election.
No kidding. Do ya think?!
The CJR piece is published this week, just a touch over a month before our next national election. The decline of democracy has grown exponentially worse across the entire nation, every single day since 2004’s Presidential Election (as we have been tirelessly covering on these pages since 3am or so of November 3rd, 2004) and yet CJR has waited until now for it’s gentle hand-wringing over the lack of coverage on these matters in the national media.
They go so far as to describe The New York Times as “typically strong on voting controversy” before softly suggesting they haven’t done enough to cover these matters. Never mind that it was the Times who, perhaps single-handedly, instructed the nation that nothing at all went wrong in Ohio in 2004 when they characterized the efforts of those of us trying to investigate what happened on Election Day as little more than “the conspiracy theories of leftwing bloggers” on Nov. 21, 2004.
We wrote at the time about that article:
The following day we constructively offered them 15 hard news items concerning “irregularities” in the 2004 election that merited their investigation, rather than their condescension. To this date, we’re aware of them having investigated none of them.
“Typically strong on voting controversy?” To what decade might CJR be referring?
In the meantime, nothing has been found to suggest that those of us “leftwing blogging conspiracy theorists” were anything but absolutely right in our concern, dilligence, and attention to the matter.
The “paper of record” sets the tone for America and for all of the other media. They failed this country abysmally.
CJR bills themselves as “America’s Premier Media Monitor.” In other words, their job is to be the watchdog of the watchdogs. And yet, they’ve taken two years to admonish the national media for having failed to cover the very dissolution of our democracy, in plain sight and before our very eyes, in a tepid little editorial this month.
Consider us the watchdog watchdog watchdog.
NEWS FLASH FOR CJR (feel free to face this criticism two years from now if you wish): While your spanking the national media for failing to do their job on this most crucial topic, you have utterly failed to do yours in the meantime. Glasses houses, much?
Finally, the ironically condescending little CJR editorial (which mentions some of the few outlets who have covered the issue sparsely, while leaving out those who have reported on it every single day since November 2nd, 2004 — what, me bitter?) concludes thusly:
Uh, no. Sorry, guys. The “time to think about that” was years ago. Now, it’s pretty much too late to do a damned thing to “guard the democratic process.” At least for the 2006 election. You have failed as miserably as those whom you have finally decided to criticize (gently).
See you in September of 2008…when you all decide to give a damn about this issue the next time.
…CONTACT…
Click here to Email CJR
.
.
.
Everyone who visits this site knows that The Brad Blog is THE king watchdog on these matters. Frankly, I’ve never heard of the CJR. Who needs them when you have sites like this?
.
.
.
CYA..We’ll probably be seeing it from MSM. But WE know that they are enablers. Some of us will never trust them again. Lots of younger thinking people will never trust them period.Maybe it’s a good thing as Martha Stuart says. To find and publish OUR news instead of being spoonfed propaganda. If you’ve seen Good Night and Good Luck you know it’s nothing new.I miss the NY Times..used to buy it from the newstand every day. After the ’04 prez. debate between Kerry and Bush..second one..I believe the Times essentially stated there was a debate. As a former psych. nurse, I knew Bush was in serious trouble mentally. That was the story. Never bought the Times again. They have shown their true hand corporate/fascist tools. Cutting back on reporters is said to be cost cutting. It’s really We get our news from KKKarl Rove.Brad, you are true…and make me proud.One of the few who has been willing to stand alone and call a spade a spade.There will be many following your lead after Nov. as this cabal gets more and more desperate …willing to show themselves to be criminals.
While one can blame the more nationally recognized news papers for not covering the election debacle after the 2004 vote, I am wondering why the Ohio papers did nothing much. Where was the Plain Dealer in this whole thing? The PD failed miserably! They are the local watch dog. They should be looking out for democracy in their own back yard.
This is your proof, that you are in the dark, unless you get your news on the internet from Brad Blog/Raw Story, TV from LINK-TV & FSTV, and newspaper American Free Press. The NYTimes, today, tells us 5 years later, that there’s issues with e-vote machines. Fuck you! NYTimes!!! Fuck you!!! You sold out, you are not, and WILL NOT, be DOING YOUR JOB anywhere in the near future. Keep drumming up the Iran War, like you did the Iraq War, and then write a retraction on page 17 after you screw everybody into the Iran War.
America (Republicans) legalize TORTURE…while fake “mavericks” McCain/Warner/Graham “pretend” to dissent…all while making the wimpy Dems look bad…
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/joshua/41988
On of the recent great Rovian political moves. Legalize torture, while pretending part of the party is against it…
EXTRY! EXTRY! AMERICAN FOOLS FALL FOR IT AGAIN!!!
This is what happens when you speak out…just ask Clint Curtis!!! This website was “announced” in a flyer that went out yesterday in District 24. I think it will work against Feeney however…the reception has been horrible. People are just so tired of negative advertising. Feeney is his own worst enemy….
http://www.crazyclintcurtis.com
My point is that no one wants to believe that vote fraud is real. When someone as brave as Clint points it out this is what happens. Check it out and send Clint $$$$ to counter this trash.
Emma
That site above looks like a 2nd-grader made it. Maybe Feeney made it! I feel bad for them, I hope they think it’s a good site. Don’t tell them….ssshhhhh…….
It looks like there’s about 2 people in Florida who are for the corrupt Feeney getting re-elected (I use the term “elected” very very loosely).
Get the Ray Lemme posters out for the Clint-Feeney debate!!! He’ll be sweating like in the Edgar Allen Poe “Tell Tale Heart”.
Frankly, I’ve never heard of the CJR. Who needs them when you have sites like this?
Because if our objective is to CHANGE this, then we need to inform more people about what is going on.
{Ed Note: No personal attacks. –99}
While one can blame the more nationally recognized news papers for not covering the election debacle after the 2004 vote, I am wondering why the Ohio papers did nothing much. Where was the Plain Dealer in this whole thing?
Plenty of “blame” to go around here – atrios banned anyone questioning the 2004 elections. Even today, that group of “superblogs” will not cover this.
Funny how people want to come to this site and point the fingers at every other media source when even the so-called-liberal blogosphere will not touch it.
What gives – is brad wrong (I don’t think so, he is doing legit journalism) or are the self-proclaimed mouthpieces and superblogs ignoring the most important issue of the day?
Are they all waiting to get “the memo” from kos?
Clammyc writes about the 2002 Georgia election. Not something I’m sure is appropriate for me to go into detail on my blog, but folks here at BRAD BLOG might find this worth looking at.
email duly sent:
A few of us have been running around yelling “Soylent Green is people!” since, say November/December of 2000, or after the weird returns in Georgia in 2002, or certainly since November 3rd, 2004.
And all this time–6 years–with the exception of Bob Koehler and Keith Olberman and, more recently, Lou Dobbs–the national mainstream media has done virtually no reporting on the threat to our democracy posed by the corporate-driven privatization of our elections. There has been absolutely no connect-the-dots concern about the all the “glitches” and “errors” and “miscalculations” reported, piecemeal, locally, in the wake of election after election.
And now, *now*, just weeks before one of the most important mid-terms this nation has ever faced, you think maybe the press could have done a little better.
What a pity.
And I’m a member of the group that’s watchdogging the
watchdog watchdog watchdog.
haha
Benny #10: I’m still waiting for that memo from Kos.
The media is preparing the public for a Republican party loss this election. Then when it happens, the media and the Republicans can become self-referencing and point to these stories of voting machine problems that just suddenly started happening out of the blue.
I’d bet my life that this is exactly what is going to happen. Should the impossible happen and the REpublicans win, then these issues will be swept under the rug again.
THe CJR matters because there are still many people employed in the mainstream media who think that they are journalists. They honestly BELIEVE they are doing a good job and “staying impartial” and “reporting both sides of the story” and “not letting liberal bias get into their pieces” and “not getting dragged into conspiracy and tin-foil-hat stories.” The problem is, they are mostly just acting as a propaganda arm for the neo-con Rethuglican right and the corporate state. But they DO read the CJR, and it matters.
As for the “liberal blogs aren’t covering this” meme that is repeated here often (though I think it is only one or two people who do the postings)… GET OVER IT!
Some blogs are “liberal” and others just pretend to be liberal but are actually positioning themselves to sell out to the mainstream corporate media and make some money. It serves no purpose to come HERE and argue about what OTHER blogs are doing.
Bradblog is doing the work. Bev Harris and blackboxvoting may be doing it too, I don’t know for sure. (I haven’t been back there since December of 2004 when she and her admins kept saying “this isn’t a partisan issue” and I kept calling them on that shit because when one party is doing all the stealing, it sure as hell IS a “partisan issue” and to ignore that is to risk failure.) THAT IS ALL THAT MATTERS; That there IS a place to go for the information. If other blogs won’t allow this discussion, so be it — over time they will lose those members of the public who care about this discussion. Nuff said.
October 5: Show ’em we are awake.
November 8: Show ’em what we care.
November 9 & on: Show ’em what we are made of.
Charlie L # 16. I visted “The World Can’t Wait” site and was really interested until I read some of the articles. One in particular by The Revolutionary Communist Party, who started the site, don’t look too fondly on Lamont. That left me with ???
http://revcom.us/a/057/lamont-en.html
http://worldcantwait.net/index....&Itemid=2
Q: But aren’t there communists in World Can’t Wait?
A: Yeah, there are. Supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party helped initiate it. They’re in it because they think it’s absolutely urgent to get rid of this regime, that it would both lift a huge burden from the world and would also give people a sense of their own potential power, and they think all that would open up avenues to get to the kind of society they want.