Thursday, June 05, 2008

New York Times Perpetuates the Myth that George Bush Won the 2000 Election

They buried the truth about the 2000 election, and they're still burying it today.

"In 2001 painstaking postmortems of the Florida count, one by the New York Times and another by a consortium of newspapers, concluded that Mr. Bush would have come out slightly ahead, even if all the votes counted throughout the state had been retallied." Alessandra Stanley, New York Times, May 23, 2008, in a review of the HBO television movie, "Recount"

That's not true.

The New York Times did not do its own recount. It did participate in a consortium. Here's what the consortium actually said: "If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards, and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won, by a very narrow margin." Ford Fessenden and John M. Broder, New York Times, Nov. 12, 2001.

Why did Ms. Stanley make such an important and fundamental error?

It is not a trivial matter. It is a common piece of misinformation. Many, many people believe it. Now a few more do, as a result of Ms. Stanley's review. It is not a trivial matter. Because that misinformation was created by one of the most bizarre, and still completely unexplained, journalistic events in modern times.

Here's what happened....

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