THE MEDIA COVER-UP OF THE GORE VICTORY Check the new WhoseFlorida for updates By David Podvin and Carolyn Kay The Consortium of media organizations that has
delayed announcing the results of the Florida presidential election ballot
study contends that it had absolutely no idea who was going to win that
recount. The Consortium further contends that the ballots have not yet been
tabulated, making it impossible for anyone to know the outcome. It also states
that the results of the ballot study would have been released to the American
people if not for the terrorist attack on September 11. The Consortium is engaging in sophistry. It is
deliberately seeking to deceive the public with incomplete and misleading
information. This dishonesty is entirely consistent with the mainstream
media’s pattern of lying that recurred throughout the presidential campaign. Part two in this series deals with the Consortium’s
lack of candor as it has sought to advance its own financial interests by
concealing Al Gore’s clear victory in Florida and refusing to acknowledge
that he was the rightful winner in the 2000 presidential election. It is important to emphasize that we do not allege
the conglomerates that control the American mainstream media have engaged in a
conspiracy, only that they have damaged American democracy by conducting
themselves with unpatriotic self interest and all consuming greed. On January 9, 2001, eight media organizations
announced their intention to form the Consortium that would examine and
classify the votes in the Florida presidential election. The eight news
organizations were The New York Times, The Washington Post, Dow Jones and
Company (The Wall Street Journal), the Associated Press, The Tribune Company
(The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune, among others), The Palm Beach
Post, The St. Petersburg Times, and CNN (which later dropped out). The Consortium sought to gain credibility for the
integrity of its recount by hiring the not-for-profit National Opinion
Research Center to perform the actual ballot handling tasks and to compile the
relevant information. NORC was assigned to provide the raw data to each of the
members of the Consortium. It would then be up to the individual media outlets
to decide how they would interpret and report the data to the American people. All of this was to be completed by April, 2001. At the time that the Consortium announced its plans
to categorize the votes, some national public opinion polls showed that over a
third of Americans considered George W. Bush to be an illegitimate president.
Several prominent syndicated columnists had written that Gore was fortunate to
“lose”, because the poisonous atmosphere in the aftermath of the
controversial election guaranteed that the new president was destined to one
term of bitterness and gridlock. The perception of the mainstream political and media
analysts was that there were only three possible outcomes of the ballot study: Bush could win in a photo
finish, as he had in each previous recount. Two thirds of Americans surveyed said that they were
ready to move on. They believed that it was basically an even election; they
might never be completely sure who actually won, but someone had to be
president, and Bush won the recounts and the Supreme Court verdict. For most
Americans, regardless of who literally won an election that was too close to
call, it was time to get on with life. Against this backdrop, any of the three results of
the ballot study that were considered possible would not be harmful to Bush.
If the ballot study showed he won, then that would confirm he was the
legitimate president. If it were a tie, then he would be no worse off than
before the study was released. If Gore won a squeaker, then the most diehard
of the Democrats might challenge the legitimacy of a Bush administration, but
the GOP had prepared for that possibility by assigning party activists to
every Florida county for the specific purpose of screaming fraud. Another very
close vote accompanied by frenzied controversy would make the Consortium
ballot study just a tiresome repeat of the soap opera that most of
election-weary America had already seen and turned off. If the establishment deep thinkers were right, then
the only possible results from the Consortium study could help legitimize
Bush, but could not harm his legitimacy among those Americans who had
“gotten over it”. There was, however, a potential complication that had
been discounted by the corporations that were financing this venture: What would happen if the Consortium recount revealed
that Gore had won decisively? The NORC’s examination of the ballots began in
February. MakeThemAccountable has spoken with several participants who
were in the NORC coding rooms where the ballots of the Florida
presidential election were reviewed. These people did not know each other
and were in different counties within Florida. Each of them independently
stated that, based on their personal observation, Al Gore was winning at
least two thirds of those disputed ballots that NORC coders were recording.
These were ballots that had not been included in previous recounts. The Consortium has stated that it cannot possibly
have known the outcome of the ballot coding because NORC did not generate a
final tabulation. The Consortium even contends that, because the ballots were
not delivered to the media organizations until mid-September, and because
those organizations have been completely preoccupied with covering the
war against terrorism, the result of the recount is still a complete mystery
to them. The Consortium is lying about this, as well as other
things. The ballot examination process, or coding process,
had teams consisting of an NORC employee supervising three coders.
It was the job of the coders to identify the characteristics of any
expression of voter intent on the ballots.
Their observations were entered into a computer database so that the
media organizations comprising the Consortium could later evaluate the
data to determine the winner. The ballots showed only numbers and not the
names of candidates, so NORC assumed that those who were evaluating the
ballots did not know which candidate was getting which votes. .
The supervisors were responsible for comparing the pattern of vote tabulation
by each coder, to further insure that bias would not enter the process. In an
interview with MakeThemAccountable, NORC Public Information Officer Julie
Antelman confirmed that, if someone
knew which number applied to which candidate, then they could tell if there
was a trend. To those who were carefully observing the
coding, and who had enough knowledge of Florida county ballot configurations
and precinct voting patterns to figure out which number represented Bush and
which represented Gore, it was clear exactly how the vote
categorization was going. Specifically, they saw the inclusion of many
disputed ballots that had been successfully excluded from previous
recounts because of pressure tactics by the Bush campaign. In the
objective, professional setting of the NORC coding process, the winner of
the overwhelming number of previously disputed ballots was Al Gore. From the first day of the NORC process, there was a
visible presence of pro-Bush demonstrators outside the coding rooms. What has
not been widely reported is that there was also a constant Bush presence
inside the coding rooms. The NORC had a policy that allowed for a
representative of either party to observe the process. In counties like
Hernando, observers could pay in order to actually sit at the coding tables.
The observer was not allowed to comment, intrude, or interact with the coders,
or in any way seek to influence the ballot study. There is no evidence that the partisan observers
corrupted the process of coding ballots, but their presence certainly
destroys the myth of an “unknowable” result. Inside the rooms of the
NORC coding process, politically experienced G.O.P. operatives carefully
watched for trends. They saw bad news for Bush. For example, in
Republican Lake County, election officials had disqualified six hundred
ballots because voters put a pencil mark in the circle by a candidate's name
and also wrote the same candidate's name on another part of the
ballot. According to the G.O.P., this made it impossible to discern the
voters’ intent. The coders perceived that someone who checked a
candidate’s name and also wrote in the same candidate’s name probably
meant to vote for that candidate. The Republicans screamed that no one could possibly
know for certain which candidate the voter meant to choose in these instances
“unless they were psychic”. They decried the NORC’s “pathetic attempts
at mind reading”. The G.O.P.’s high decibel cries of persecution had
successfully intimidated officials at the previous Florida recounts, but the
rules of the NORC coding session prohibited observers from emoting inside the
rooms. The indignant Republicans had to go outside to vent. The net result was
a gain of one hundred thirty votes for Gore using previously uncounted ballots
in just one Republican county. George W. Bush had a widespread presence of people
actively looking after his interests. There were Republican protesters outside
the coding rooms and Republican observers inside the coding rooms in every
county. The Gore organization had already disbanded. As during the election and the recounts, the
Republicans were fighting as hard as they could —
no holds barred — while the
Democrats defaulted. Even so, during the Consortium ballot study the
coders just found too many Gore votes for the G.O.P. to be able to “win”
again by invoking invisible crimes and decrying nonexistent conspiracies. It is simply false for the Consortium to claim people
were unaware that the results were developing in a way that would be highly
embarrassing, at best, for George W. Bush. The Republican observers saw the
strong pro-Gore trend and responded with typical aplomb. A G.O.P. activist
accused one NORC coder of being drunk on the job, a lie that was later
disproven. Even so, Republican operatives reportedly pressured another coder
to confirm the phony allegation. The Republicans yelled about the quality of
the coders, screamed about the treachery of the process, and threw temper
tantrums about the unfairness of it all. Of course, they offered no proof of
their slanderous charges. Though the G.O.P. observers were publicly panicking
as the trend continued strongly against them, the Consortium observers in the
very same rooms claim to be completely unaware of who was winning. The members of the Consortium have a sufficient
interest in this matter that they collectively have paid millions of dollars
to subsidize the ballot study. The media organizations that comprise the
Consortium employ hundreds of experienced journalists who possess expertise in
gathering information. A number of their most able journalists were
eyewitnesses to what was happening in the coding rooms. And yet, the
Consortium pleads total ignorance of who was gaining votes during the
NORC coding process. Dan Keating was the Washington
Post on-site editor for the ballot study. In an interview with
MakeThemAccountable, he said, “We
intentionally blinded ourselves to the information.” Some coders knew enough about Florida county ballot
configuration to be able to tell which numerical code represented Bush and
which identified Gore. The same was true of supervisors, private citizens who
viewed the study, and the increasingly hysterical Republican observers.
Non-Consortium journalists were not exactly clueless, either: The
media are finding more ballots meant for Gore. In election-speak: Even though
final statewide results aren't in, early returns favor Gore. The outrageous contention by the Consortium that
they “could not possibly have known the outcome” of the ballot study is
just one of the blatant lies they have told in their continuing effort to
finesse a pro-Gore result that they didn’t anticipate, that runs counter to
their financial interests, and that they had apparently chosen to
“indefinitely” delay even before the terrorist attack on September 11. Next – Part Three: More Consortium Dishonesty,
which will be followed by an examination of the mainstream media’s financial
motivations in lying for Bush. We will look at the concerns of some that the
current delay in releasing the results foreshadows another convoluted attempt
by the mainstream media to award Bush the victory that was denied him by the
voters. We will also reveal which famed captain of industry mobilized the
media elite to rally behind Bush in 2000.
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