Sky News UK: media bias most disturbing re. Russian election...

[DeepModem Mom]

Just heard a television report in London about the Russian election, citing dead people voting, supermarket employees being required to wear badges at work supporting Putin's party, etc. -- but the reporter said that the most disturbing thing about the election was the state-controlled media spending every day praising Putin and his policies, and criticizing the opposition. I wondered if the reporter had any idea how close we were to that in the U.S. The report really hit home, and disturbed me in a way the British reporter would never have guessed --

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Then how about this for irony?

White House expresses concern about fairness of Russian elections

"It was the OSCE which monitored the elections, and they expressed concerns about the fairness of the election campaign. We share those concerns," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
...
The OSCE suggested the vote was tainted by the use of state resources to promote the United Russia party, whose main ideology appears to be its loyalty to Putin.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/12/08/national1019EST0513.DTL

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Yep, they're shameless nt

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Remembering more: "voters really had no choice"

I'm remembering more of what the Sky reporter said. About the supermarket employees, he said it would be like "all Sainsbury's employees being required to wear New Labour badges," and about the media, he said that given that the media's pro-Putin message was all they got, "the voters really had no choice."