"Why is the Media Downplaying Our Voting Scandal?" -- New Article by Danny Schechter in Commondreams.org

Published on Friday, May 19, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Why is the Media Downplaying Our Voting Scandal?
by Danny Schechter

Explain this to me. Why do so few of our TV “journalists” and political reporters seem interested in all the questions that have been raised about the integrity of our voting system?

Voting is at the heart of our democracy. Billions of dollars are spent on political campaigns and tens of millions on covering them. All the networks have election units complete with pollsters, analysts and experts up the kazoo. All of them sound authoritative and spice their commentary with personal war stories and a parade of insider anecdotes.

Just tune in any election night and you have to marvel at all the space age technology, fancy graphics and computer assisted projections. The anchors seem to know as much about the history of voting percentages in each Congressional district as fanatical baseball fans recall earned run averages and the speed of each pitch.

If there are ten military men and women backing up each soldier in the field, there are tens of political aides, advisors, interns and hangers on “supporting” our elected politicians, or is it poli-trikians?. Handicapping elections is one of their specialties and they know most of the races and players by heart.

Compared to corporate machinations, or even military-industrial decisions, politics is over-covered, And yet the actual process of voting—the machines, the counting, the verification, and the questions raised by well informed journalists and analysts about voting fraud seem to bore the punditocracy.

I know because I made a film, Counting on Democracy about what actually happened in Florida in what is still of the most controversial elections in our history, with the popular votes won by Gore and the election won by Bush. 175,000 votes went uncounted. Once it was decided that the GOP won, most of the media lost interest. Very few journalists looked into what the ACLU called “the tyranny of small decisions” that affected the vote.

Complete article

Note: Thanks to Jack Gordon for bringing article to my attention.
-R.B.