I was reminded of that when I read this in Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s article, Was the 2004 Election Stolen?:
The mounting evidence that Republicans employed broad, methodical and illegal tactics in the 2004 election should raise serious alarms among news organizations. But instead of investigating allegations of wrongdoing, the press has simply accepted the result as valid. "We're in a terrible fix," Rep. Conyers told me. "We've got a media that uses its bullhorn in reverse -- to turn down the volume on this outrage rather than turning it up. That's why our citizens are not up in arms."In a way, this serves as an addendum to my two posts about the Conspiracy Theory label. There are factors for which no actual conspiracy is necessary. The media's complete "lack of interest" - to quote Keith Olbermann - in this story doesn't mean that each and every outlet was "in on" the conspiracy, merely that looking the other way serves their own agenda. Bland media that doesn't rock the boat is more pleasing to corporate sponsorship, which has a stake in maintaining the status quo. It's also easier and cheaper to refrain from boat-rocking, and it hedges against the possible withholding of access to the courts of power of said boat-rockers.
The lone news anchor who seriously questioned the integrity of the 2004 election was Keith Olbermann of MSNBC. I asked him why he stood against the tide. "I was a sports reporter, so I was used to dealing with numbers," he said. "And the numbers made no sense. Kerry had an insurmountable lead in the exit polls on Election Night -- and then everything flipped." Olbermann believes that his journalistic colleagues fell down on the job. "I was stunned by the lack of interest by investigative reporters," he said. "The Republicans shut down Warren County, allegedly for national security purposes [which has been shown to be a cover story] -- and no one covered it. Shouldn't someone have sent a camera and a few reporters out there?"
There have been actual bribes and payoffs - that's been proven - and it's likely that there have been many more that we'll never discover. Many of us are certain the 2004 election was fixed, and the media isn't necessarily to blame for that.
However, the public's ignorance of this treasonous act must be largely laid at the feet of the US media.
12 comments:
I read bits and pieces of Kennedy's article. If the Dems take Congress, this should be the first on the list of investigation. Voting is the cornerstone of our democracy.
Sometimes a conspiracy needs no conspiring; the interests of the parties involved means that things flow a certain way. This is especially common when all the parties have to do is nothing -- not covering this story, not investigating that mess-up.
The vast majority of "conspiracies" are most likely the result of a nasty combination of greed, laziness, and incompetence.
David,
It should be, but the Dems haven't said boo about either 2000 or 2004 to date, so I don't expect them to say anything about vote fraud in the future.
24% turnout for the CA primary for my county.
Everything you say about the media is true but the local paper could run banner headlines and no one would notice.
The neocons always vote.
Everything you say about the media is true but the local paper could run banner headlines and no one would notice.
The neocons always vote.
Of course you're right, Granny.
It's a chicken-and-egg thing, isn't it? The govt screws people over, doesn't listen, isn't responsive to voters... so people have less belief that their vote matters or can change anything, so they don't vote... so the govt is even less accountable... so people grow more apathetic, feel more helpless...
Still, I do wonder, would more people vote if they were better informed? If it was easier to get informed?
24% turnout for the CA primary for my county.
The neocons always vote.
That's why anti-gay issues were on so many ballots in 2004 -- to get out the bigot vote, which tends to go strongly Republican. These are folks who believe passionately in denying rights to others, whereas everyone else is (overall) pretty comfortable with the status quo, and doesn't see that voting's necessary to maintain that, or else completely disillusioned and convinced that voting can't fix anything.
I don't know. I've heard a lot of people saying the media's letting the US public down, but to me that's putting the cart before the ox. Access to news has never been easier than it is right now. If you want to hear what's going on in Iraq, or with your own elections, you can. Quite frankly, I think people have the potential to be much better informed now than they were in the 1960s when the media was supposedly sterling. Back then, you really did have to trust them; now you don't. All it requires is an act of the will.
My feeling is we've reached a point where people don't want to hear the bad news. Not most people, anyway. They feel powerless to stop it, so why burden themselves with it? Focus on celebrity, power, wealth, fame... immerse in material excess, the feeling of being sated. I see such parallels to the end of the Roman Republic and its segue into empire. Once, they too were preoccupied with the health of their participatory democracy as well. Like the United States, having overthrown a king, they wanted checks and balances placed on their government. The trick is, things like that only work so long as you aren't constantly putting your county in positions where the need for fast action is the norm, and snap decisions are required by people with the authority to make them without being second-guessed. As Rome became more obsessed with its military stretch and eventual over-reach, the republic became an empire. Some people could see it happening at the time (beware the Ides of March...), but that didn't stop it. The forms of the republic were kept, but the power of the offices was consolidated into a military dictatorship. I believe the same can be said of the United States today, which seems to me to be in the early stages of exactly that same process; really, I've been personally sensing it coming on since the Iran-Contra hearings (Nixon would not have survived that; a generation later they've named an aircraft carrier after Reagan). All the forms exist, but real participatory democracy, real checks on power, are rapidly evaporating. I believe that most Americans know this. It doesn't make them happy, but they can't imagine what to do about it. And so they tell themselves it's a temporary crisis; once the War on Terror is over, things will revert to what they were. And if not, it's a problem for future generations...
And let's not ignore the plain fact that human beings naturally enjoy being on top. For the United States, this has been effortless for the past fifty years or so. Aside from the Communist bloc where such as us did not tread, the hegemony of the US, inspired by the devastation of any realistic European competition by the Second World War, was such that everyone was beholden to the US, and often gratefully so. It must have been heady stuff. But today there are competitors. Today others eye brass rings that once only the US could reach. If corners must be cut and rules broken to extend that reach again beyond that of others, well, again, I don't think most Americans are happy about it, but it's better than giving up the second car or downsizing the SUV because they're paying for gasoline what it's really worth like the Europeans do, or not being able to afford four-foot plasma screen TVs whose price is subsidized by the $2.5B loans Japan and China float the US every single day now. Even if you object to the use of absolute force to get what you want or remake other countries in your own image, it must be difficult to face giving up the potential for doing so if you should need to. So I think even quite liberal Americans must, naturally, want the US to maintain that ability, and so many of them, even, are willing to wink at "what has to be done". I think of people like John Kerry in this regard. Domestic programs in the US would be better off under his stewardship... but for the world at large, I think it would be business as usual.
The news is out there. But you have to want to know it. Junk food is always easier than shopping, and if that does the trick, that's not the fast food joint's fault. They're only giving you what you want. I think you're right in saying it's a lack of interest, but it's not for want of information.
Access to news has never been easier than it is right now.
That's not true for everyone.
This was the crux of the earlier debate I was referring to. IMO, "access to the news has never been easier" applies to a subset of educated people with time on their hands. Many Americans, increasingly working more and more hours to make ends meet (or not even), raising kids, with all the demands that implies, do not have time to spend hours on the internet educating themselves.
They may not have computers with high-speed connections, or if they do, their kids are using them for school work.
I believe people ought to be able to turn on the TV news and learn what's going on around them. Or pick up a local paper and do the same. But they are able to do neither.
Also, if they attended public schools in the US, chances are high they are utterly ignorant about US history, world events, even how their local govt works, and barely would know what to look for even if they had the time.
Which is not to say I don't agree with Lone Primate's analogy to ancient Rome. It's very apt.
I think you're right in saying it's a lack of interest, but it's not for want of information.
The lack of interest I referred to was specifically about the media. I agree with you about junk food and public apathy, but the mainstream media should be reporting this stuff, and they are not.
I can see what you're saying about the net. Not everyone does float around on it 24/7. I think depending on the mainstream media was always a mug's game, though. Think of the pressure cigarette companies put on the media in the 50s and car manufacturers on TV news in the 60s. There's never been a time when the news came from corporations before their profit margins... only within comfortable bounds. On the other hand, at least SOME of the American public now has access to sources that aren't principally financed by big corporate interests, and so can point people in the direction of news that otherwise is being swallowed up. There was no such thing as CounterPunch when I was a kid, for instance. I think rather than lamenting something that was pretty much always the case (tell me DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN wasn't wishful corporate thinking literally writ large), we should focus on the fact that in the last decade, we've emerged into a world where so much more is now possible. But it still comes back to the fact that resistence to the truth is ultimately about refusing the evidence when it's presented. This goes back to your other article about conspiracy theories... if it's uncomfortable or disturbing, it's a "conspiracy". So we have the tools now to confront the lies... but if the majority of the people will not see their pretty balloons popped, then Rome's doomed anyway.
True, true, true. True on all counts.
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