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I love when Mom gets her hackles up!!! Both original e-mail from Mom to Times, with weenie-esque reply! <snip> From: Public Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2004 10:50 AM To: Grace ****** Subject: Re: Congressman Conyers' hearings last Wednesday
At 06:19 PM 12/11/2004, you (My Mom) wrote:
Well, it appears that the major paper of record for these United States did not think it worth the time to cover the hearings held last Wednesday, but they were covered (thank goodness someone knows what is important) on C-Span, live and in full. How you can hold your heads up is beyond me. Shame upon you. There is NO doubt that something definitely is rotten in Ohio....and possibly elsewhere. I suppose you don’t want to miss the peachy cocktail parties in Georgetown, or is it that your reporters might be excluded from the White House ? What is it? This is your job. You are supposed to cover the news as it happens, and cover it intelligently and fairly. The people testifying at the hearings were not a bunch of internet kooks and bloggers; they were professionals – lawyers and professors and people with degrees in Political Science. They were from People for the American Way, from the ACLU, from the Green Party and others too numerous to mention. And you didn’t think it worth the ink? And there were some gut-wrenching stories told there, some serious stuff – like the woman with a cane, who was in the middle of undergoing chemotherapy. She was waiting and waiting in line, and she fainted. Robert Fitrakis, Ph.D., J.D., went to complain and insist that the woman must be accommodated, under the provision of the Americans with Disabilities Act, or the HAVA act...or just plain out of human concern. The answer was NO. The story was told of an older black male who was brought to the voting place from his hospital bed. He still had the IV in his arm. He had to stand in line and wait. He had been refused an absentee ballot, so had to get taken to the voting place and then wait, and wait, and wait. There is a story here. Where were you? Matthew Segal, a student at Kenyon College, at Gambier, Ohio, said that the students had to stand in line up to 10 to 12 hours in the rain. Some could not wait; they had classes and other obligations. Is this the way we encourage young people to vote? I believe young Mr. Segal indicated that there were just two voting machines for the 1100 + registered student voters. IF the story ever gets out in its full glory, despite your efforts to hide it, you will be shown to have been sleeping at the switch. IF they refuse to seat the Ohio delegation (a move that was suggested and applauded) unless all the votes have been counted and verified, you will look damn silly for not knowing where that came from and why. IF you prefer to stay silent, fearful that our leader is speaking for God – and you wouldn’t want to get on the bad side of that, then you are as crazy as they are. Yours, in utter despair for the condition of our printed media, as well as the “usual sources” on TV....grace ****** Sacramento, CA
Dear Ms. T,
In the first few weeks after the election several readers wrote us about this issue. Mr. Okrent responded to these concerns on his web journal. I include the entry below (see post #35).
http://forums.nytimes.com/top/opinion/readersopinions/forums/thepubliceditor/danielokrent/index.html?offset=36&fid=.f555e99/36
dokrent - 5:40 PM ET November 21, 2004 (#35 of 40)
The Times and Covering Allegations of Election Fraud
Sorry to have been neglecting this spot for so long; I could give you a list of excuses, but none of them is especially good.
Now, though, my mailbox has begun to overflow with criticisms of The Times for not looking more deeply into allegations of large-scale vote fraud in Ohio and Florida, a story (if true) that no one can ignore. In some of these messages, writers say that "now that the theft of the election has been proven ...," The Times must reveal this to the wider world.
Were the assertion even nearly so, I would do more than recommend that The Times reveal it I’d be demanding it publicly, loudly and frequently. But the evidence I have seen to date proves nothing, other than that there was a certain amount of error in certain counties, and an aggressive effort by some partisans in some areas to challenge some likely Democratic voters. To my knowledge, no one in the Kerry campaign’s vast on-the-ground operation, or in its armies of well-situated lawyers, has made the argument that what happened in Ohio (or Florida) could have changed the result of the election. Similar views were explained in "Vote Fraud Theories, Spread By Blogs, Are Quickly Buried," by Tom Zeller (Nov. 12).
And more, I expect, will be explored and explained in future articles if meaningful allegations can indeed be established as facts. Both Matthew Purdy, the head of The Times’s investigative unit, and Rick Berke, the paper’s Washington editor, assure me that reporters will continue to look into the issue. I’m confident that if they find something, they’ll publish it. A good investigative reporter (much less a whole staff of them) turning away from a story like this one if true would be like a flower turning away from the sun. Careers are made by stories that detail massive election fraud.
But: the operative words here are if true. Wishing doesn’t make it so. Although it would probably pain him to have someone from The Times touting his work, David Corn of The Nation, in a recent column, offers plenty of reason to examine the allegations before I, or anyone else, should leap to give them credence. You can find Corn’s column here.
Since then, over seven hundred other readers have raised similar concerns requesting more coverage on this issue. You may be interested in the following articles:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/22/politics/22poll.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/15/politics/15ohio.html
I raised reader concerns with Mr. Okrent and a few days ago he asked me to let you know that he does not believe The Times's coverage of the voting in Ohio is over.
The following articles have since appeared:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/29/politics/29ohio.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/24/national/24vote.html
Mr. Okrent wanted me to write you back asking that you please stay tuned.
Sincerely, Arthur Bovino Office of the Public Editor The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Ohio-Vote-Challenge.html
<snip>
Mom's husband, my old man, was a reporter. And a friend to Pierre Salinger, Joe Rosenthal, and a whole bunch WWII writers and recorders of history. Plus... her ancestors (and mine) used to manufacture these before the Rand Corporation swallowed them up...
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