Mainstream Media's Favorite Voter Suppression Methods
* Lie, Damn Lies and MSM Polls
* Projecting the Media Favorite as the Winner
* Exit Polls and Fraud
* Pro-Obama, Anti-McCain-Palin Bias
* Hit Pieces Masquerading as "News"
The Mainstream Media is conducting a none-too-sophisticated campaign of conservative voter suppression. It's Big Media's largest partisan campaign effort--ever.
Voter suppression is a form of electoral fraud and refers to the use of governmental power, political campaign strategy, and private resources aimed at suppressing (i.e. reducing) the total vote of opposition candidacies instead of attempting to change likely voting behavior by changing the opinions of potential voters. This method is particularly effective if a significant amount of voters are intimidated individually because the voter might not consider his or her single vote important.
Is the blatant pro-Obama, anti-McCain-Palin Mainstream Media bias an attempt at voter suppression?
Some conservatives and independents--after listening to CNN, the AP and other MSM reports--may not vote in November. Perhaps, deciding that it will do no good--as they've been told repeatedly that the election has already been decided in Barack Obama's favor.
Previously, the MSM usually reserved voter suppression efforts to Election Day: calling Florida for Al Gore, broadcasting that the polls in Florida were closed in 2000 and the Kerry exit poll hoax in 2004. Before election day, the MSM contented themselves with publishing wildly-skewed polls, which strangely, always favored the Democrats by wide margins. [See below.]
One of the most egregious example of MSM voter suppression tactics is the exit polls. This fraud reached its most distorted heights in 2004, when voters in the afternoon learned, via the major networks, that John Kerry was not only winning--he was winning in a landslide.
John Wambough wrote in January 2005 about the exit poll scam.
Shortly after 1pm on Election Day the National Networks' raw exit-poll data was posted on the Internet showing Kerry winning the National Election in a landslide. From the standpoint of the American voter, this data was projecting / forecasting / indicating the winner of the National Election and it was doing so before a single poll had closed in any state. Stringent Network standards for projecting or calling a state over the national airways mean little when the Internet is used as an alternative avenue for subverting the electoral process.
...
National Network disinformation tactics (telling the public the polls were closed when they weren't and telling the public that Al Gore had won the election when he didn't) proved highly effective in curtailing Florida voting in Election 2000. Many citizens of the Florida Panhandle know voters who chose not to vote once the networks (CBS in particular) announced that all Florida polls were closed and that Al Gore had won Florida and therefore the National Election. According to the Clerk for Elections, Okaloosa County, Florida: "In past elections, there was usually a rush of people coming from work, trying to get to vote before the polls closed" Soon after 6 p.m. in the Central Time Zone, voting volume dropped almost to zero in 361 polling places in the Panhandle.
--Election 2004: exit-poll disinformation hoax backfires?
When the obituary of the Mainstream Media is written, 2008 will go down as a year when all pretenses of objectivity were dropped. Not content to rely on the usual tactics of anti-conservative (Republican) stories, skewed polls and election day shenanigans, MSM editors are leaving nothing to chance, in what might be, their last hurrah.
The onslaught of pro-Obama, anti-McCain-Palin propaganda pieces, parading as "news" stories, far surpasses anything the MSM has attempted in years past.
A READER AT A MAJOR NEWSROOM EMAILS:
"Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working." I asked permission to reprint without attribution and it was granted.
Is it any wonder that three times
more Americans believe in UFOs than trust the Mainstream Media?
Jeff G. at Protein Wisdom, asks
Can 50 million Americans file suit for fraud?: "Because that would be the kind of big news not even the mainstream press could make disappear."
The Anchoress lays out an eerily-Apocalypic scenario
“The fix is in, and it’s working…”I suppose this is why print media and the press in general don’t care about their tumbling revenues; when The Pelosi gets the regulated internet and restricted Congress that she wants, and Obama gets his thugs and his Justice Department monitoring, intimidating and shutting down alternative media (and the dissenting voices we’ve been told are “patriotic” when a Republican is in the White House) the incestuous mainstream press will go back to being the only game in town. Pravda West.
Anchoress reader Eric Schubert: "The Edwards debacle was proof enough of where the heart of the MSM lies, and lack of curiousity of the press about Edwards probably cost Hillary the nomination. And that shameful episode offers a warning to the MSM. What if Obama does have a skeleton in his closet (such as a shady deal or outright bribe) that is revealed after he wins the election? While the chance of this scenario is remote, imagine the backlash against the MSM if it could be shown that a reasonable investigation by the MSM would have easily revealed this secret to the public prior to the election?"
[
John Edwards and Sarah Palin did indeed get very different MSM coverage.]
John Hinderaker at Powerline agrees that the fix is in, it is working--and
you knew it all along.Sadly, it's true: it is indeed working. We live in a political system that has not yet been adequately described, but one might call it a "mediated democracy." Mediated by a self-appointed, generally ignorant but highly opinionated "elite" that is not elite by any conventional measure--income, intelligence, education, social position--but that successfully dictates the terms of political discourse even though it no longer controls (exclusively, anyway) the means of production of the news.
The MSM is "
In the Tank and not even Trying", according to Confederate Yankee.
If you recall, several weeks ago Charlie Gibson used a doctored quote when interviewing Sarah Palin.
Gene Johnson of the Associated Press was the person (I hesitate to use the term journalist at this point) who purposefully truncated the quote to make it mean something entirely different, and so I contacted his superior, and noted he had clearly violated APs code of ethics by doctoring the quote.
After a period of silence, I asked the AP "In what way is altering a subject's quote to change the entire context of the quote, and present an entirely false interpretation of what the subject clearly said, not at odds with the Associated Press' ethics policy?"
The AP's response?
"[T]he remark could be interpreted in different ways".
Of course,
when it comes to the Blogosphere, the AP's position is that they have no ethics.
Details about Barack Obama,
the questionable tactics traced back to his campaign and
his many questionable associates get the "John Edwards treatment" in the Mainstream press. [See also "
Barack Obama: The Strong-Arm Tactics of Team Obama", "
Sarah Palin, Hillary Attacks: Fear and Loathing in the MSM" and "
Sarah Palin: Far Left French Foppery, Vampires, and Elitist Palin Attacks".]
As shown with
the John Edwards affair/scandal/coverup, the AP's ethics are highly-situational. The Edwards story demonstrated not only the MSM's blantant failure to report, but also a damning indictment to even investigate allegations concerning a Democrat presidential candidate.
Allegations which were true.
CNN, CBS, NBC, Time, Newsweek, the New York Times grudgingly ran articles of the Edwards' affair only after John Edwards himself gave them the go-ahead on August 8. They have since descended into their comforting media blackout, with only ABC News pursuing the Edwards' money trail.
Is the MSM voter suppression effort coordinated?
Only in the sense that like-minded people are inclined to act the same way at different times and places. Just because cars get stolen on the same day in Florida, Wisconsin and Maine doesn't mean the thieves in those different locales are operating as a criminal conspiracy.
It only indicates that people who steal cars are active in all three states at the same time.
Is the massive MSM bias another attempt at voter suppression?
Does the Pope wear a beanie?
Will any MSM outlet question the tilted coverage in favor of Barack Obama?
Will Big Media be successful? What new tactics will the MSM unveil on Election Day 2008?
As always, the election day results will be the judge.
But Big Media has moved from reporting the news into injecting themselves into the political process, into becoming the news itself.
In Election 2008, they have dropped all pretenses of a disinterested, objective press.
The Mainstream Media, like the Chicago machine, are not content with watching events on Election Day unfold.
They want to be the kingmakers.
NOTES:
* It's interesting that the "voter suppression" article at Wikipedia cites "caging lists" as a form of voter suppression.
Caging lists have been used by political parties to eliminate potential voters from the other party's voting roll. A political party sends registered mail to addresses of registered voters. If the mail is returned as undeliverable the party uses that fact to challenge the registration, arguing that because the voter could not be reached at the address, the registration is fraudulent.
Huh?
That sounds like a good way to prevent voter fraud--unless the Wiki writer is a project director for ACORN.
* MSM PALIN ATTACKSPatterico not only
fact-checks the LA Times on Sarah Palin--something that might exhaust the resources of a small army working around the clock--he also provides comic relief by working in a reference and video to
convicted conman, Larry Sinclair.
by Mondo Frazierimage: stealing democracy
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