(Might I suggest 'Journalism' as a good new addition to your prime-time schedule!)
By Brad Friedman on 11/17/2004, 11:08pm PT  

I chanced across one of the CNN transcripts from a report on Nov. 10 that likely included screenshots from The BRAD BLOG as seen by several different folks on several different CNN programs that day.

This instance was from Newsnight with Aaron Brown where the blog of yours truly was probably shown under this text from Dan Lothian: [emphasis mine]

LOTHIAN: From e-mails to blogs screaming grand theft America, some believe massive fraud cost Senator Kerry a critical number of votes. Here's why...

Blah, blah, he goes on. Setting aside the fact that I don't believe this blog has ever charged "massive fraud", though we have in fact looked closely at the possibilities thereof, (and no, they didn't bother to contact me to find out if that's what I actually "believe") it was the end of the report that I found demonstrative of the typically maddening laziness from the bulk of the Mainstream Media. Especially now in the wake of one "massively" fucked up electoral system. Here was their closer: [emphasis once again mine]

BROWN: ...I've probably only gotten 2,000 e-mails on this particular one. One of the things that people say is that in those counties where e-machines were used, electronic voting machines were used, tended for one reason or another to favor President Bush, as opposed to counties where paper ballots or punch card ballots or old style voting machines were used. Is there, in fact, any evidence if that is true?

LOTHIAN: There's no widespread evidence of that. There's sort of anecdotal evidence. There were some places in Florida, for instance, where people complained that they went up, touched the screens, tried to vote for Senator Kerry and instead all of their votes were switched to Republicans. Those behind the machines, the companies that put out those machines said that those were sort of isolated incidents not widespread --- Aaron.

Ah, gotcha. The companies that make the machines then, the one's whose livelihood implodes based on documented evidence of widespread problems with those machines say that such reports "were sort of isolated incidents not widespread".

Well, that clears that up then! Thanks for the legwork, Dan! For a second I was worried that those machines might have been a problem!

To his (almost) credit, however, Brown replied with this:

BROWN: I suppose one person's isolated incident is another person's widespread. Dan, thank you very much, Dan Lothian in Boston tonight.

And since that time, a full week ago, I've not heard tell of a single follow-up report by Brown, or anyone else at CNN on the entire matter. I guess it was just "isolated incidents" after all.

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