O’Clery covers Harper’s angle on Bush fraud 2004

international | politics / elections | other press

Saturday July 30, 2005 17:08

by Coilín ÓhAiseadha - Spider Force

01-5054592

Harper's August cover story may be the wake-up call the old media need to cover election fraud

In his column in The Irish Times of July 30, 2005, the paper’s long-standing America correspondent Conor O’Clery reports that coverage in the US media of the case of a missing young white female has been overshadowing and displacing coverage of more significant news stories, such as genocide in Darfur and fraud in the presidential elections of November 2004.

Web sites such as Harper's and The Free Press provide background information and ongoing coverage of the election fraud. See links below.

In his column in The Irish Times of July 30, 2005, entitled “A famine of news, no news of famine”, the paper’s long-standing America correspondent Conor O’Clery reports that coverage in the US media of the case of a missing young white female has been overshadowing and displacing coverage of more significant news stories, such as genocide in Darfur and allegations of fraud in the presidential elections of November 2004.

The failure of the old media to cover evidence of fraud in the elections of November 2004 constitutes a particularly striking case of what journalist Greg Palast calls "NADD – news attention deficit disorder".

Most of the last third of O’Clery’s column addresses the story of the election fraud, including Harper’s Magazine’s cover story about John Conyers’ investigation of what went wrong in Ohio, as follows:

‘Another story that many media critics in the US feel is not getting a proper airing is alleged voting fraud in Ohio during the presidential elections last November.
However, Harper’s magazine has devoted a cover story in its current edition to an investigation of the controversy and especially the role of Ohio secretary of state Kenneth Blackwell, who was also co-chairman of the Ohio Bush re-election campaign.
Under the heading “None Dare Call It Stolen: Ohio, the election and America’s servile press”, the New York-based magazine criticises the scant media coverage of a six-week investigation by Congressional Democrats under John Conyers of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the judiciary committee which reviewed thousands of complaints of fraud, malfeasance and incompetence and cited “massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies”.
The Democrats lost Ohio and John Kerry conceded the election but stories of voter fraud have raged like wildfire on the internet. [Do I detect a note of scepticism here, despite all my efforts to provide O’Clery with fairly blinding documentation of fraud? – Coilín.]
The White House press corps has for its part been so supine in its treatment of President Bush – whom 51 per cent of Americans now believe deceived them on the reasons for going to war in Iraq – that the New York Times singled out for editorial praise [Irish national public TV channel] RTE reporter Carole Coleman when she did a feisty interview with Mr Bush last year.
The mood among Washington journalists may be changing, however, as the scandal over the leak by top officials of a CIA operative’s identity has led to the imprisonment of a reporter for refusing to reveal her sources.
Mr Bush seemed to show his displeasure at the newly assertive media when he flipped a finger at a group of reporters after a visit to Capitol Hill this week. Late-night comedian Jay Leno played a video tape of the president suddenly thrusting his right hand into the air and seeming to extend his middle finger. “That’s the thing about the second term,” said Leno, “who cares?” ’

While I can’t say I’m totally satisfied with O’Clery’s coverage of the story – particularly because it lacks depth of detail regarding irregularities in the November elections – I am delighted that he makes reference to the cover story in Harper’s Magazine, which may function as a call to the old media in the US and internationally to pull their socks up and investigate the evidence of fraud.

Here is Harper’s Magazine’s advance coverage of Mark Crispin Miller’s article in the August edition:
What Went Wrong in Ohio?
http://www.harpers.org/WhatWentWrongInOhio.html

A hard-hitting summary of Harper’s August cover story is provided by The Free Press:

None dare call it stolen - Ohio, the election, and America's servile press
by Mark Crispin Miller, summarized by Mary Anne Saucier, Columbus, Ohio
July 24, 2005
While commentators, prompted by Republicans, claimed Bush won the 2004 election through the votes of a silent majority concerned with “family values,” Mark Crispin Miller writes that when voters were asked to state “in their own words the most important factor in their vote”, only 14 percent named “moral values”. He details how the press (except for Keith Olbermann on MSNBC) ignored “the strange details of the election—except, that is, to ridicule all efforts to discuss them…It was as if they were reporting from inside a forest fire without acknowledging the fire, except to keep insisting that there was no fire.”

Read about some of the signs of fraud in the 2004 elections and judge for yourself whether you can ignore the stink from under the carpet:
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1383

John Conyers’ report on Bush fraud 2004 has been published as a paperback:
What Went Wrong In Ohio:
The Conyers Report on the 2004 Presidential Election
http://www.academychicago.com/conyers.html

For further details of what went down, and ongoing coverage of what is happening to combat past and future election fraud, I recommend the following:

Bob Fitrakis, editor of the Columbus, Ohio-based Web magazine The Free Press, is a lawyer and professor of political science who has been watching and fighting fraud in Ohio at close hand:
The Columbus Free Press, Election 2004
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19

The National Election Data Archive Project provides statistical analyses of exit polls which make it exceedingly difficult to reject the hypothesis that the Bush campaign (again) cheated in the presidential elections in November 2004:
http://www.electionarchive.org/

Geomorphologist Richard Hayes Phillips, PhD, has documented irregularities indicating electoral fraud in Ohio:
Another Stolen Election
http://web.northnet.org/minstrel/alpage.htm

Voters Unite provides background information and breaking news:
http://www.votersunite.org/

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O’Clery covers Harper’s angle on Bush fraud 2004