! Wake-up  World  Wake-up !
~ It's Time to Rise and Shine ~


We as spiritual beings or souls come to earth in order to experience the human condition. This includes the good and the bad scenarios of this world. Our world is a duality planet and no amount of love or grace will eliminate evil or nastiness. We will return again and again until we have pierced the illusions of this density. The purpose of human life is to awaken to universal truth. This also means that we must awaken to the lies and deceit mankind is subjected to. To pierce the third density illusion is a must in order to remove ourselves from the wheel of human existences. Love is the Answer by means of Knowledge and Awareness!





Burying the Lead: Democracy Denied
by Jim Naureckas

November 15, 2001

In journalism, it's called "burying the lead": A story starts off with what
everyone already knows, while the real news-- the most surprising, 
significant or never-been-told-before information-- gets pushed down where 
people are less likely to see it.

That's what happened to the findings of the media study of the uncounted
votes from last year's Florida presidential vote. A consortium of news 
outlets-- including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Tribune Co.
(Newsday's parent company), The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press and
CNN-- spent nearly a year and $900,000 reexamining every disputed ballot.

The consortium determined that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed the
ongoing recount to go through, George W. Bush would still likely have ended
up in the White House. That's because the recount ordered by the Florida
Supreme Court-- as well as the more limited recount asked for by Democratic
candidate Al Gore-- only involved so-called undervotes, ballots that when
counted mechanically registered no choice for president.

Gore and the Florida Supreme Court ignored overvotes-- votes where 
mechanical counting registered more than one vote-- on the assumption that
there would be no way to tell which of the multiple candidates the voter
actually intended to pick.

But as the consortium found when it actually looked at the overvotes, one
often could tell what the voter's intent was. Many of the overvotes 
involved, for example, a voter punching the hole next to a candidate's name,
and then writing in the same candidate's name.

Since the intent of the voter is clear, these are clearly valid votes under
Florida law. And Gore picked up enough of such votes that it almost didn't
matter what standard you used when looking at undervotes-- whether you 
counted every dimple or insisted on a fully punched chad, the consortium
found that Gore ended up the winner of virtually any full reexamination of
rejected ballots.

So there are two main findings: The Supreme Court's intervention probably
did not affect the outcome of the limited recounts then under way, and more
people probably cast valid votes for Gore than for Bush.

If the first finding was the important news, the consortium was scooped long
ago: The Miami Herald and USA Today, working as a separate team, published
stories in April that argued persuasively that the particular recounts that
were halted by the Supreme Court probably would have produced a Bush victory.

What is new - is the finding that, since voters are supposed to decide 
elections rather than lawyers or judges, the state's electoral votes appear
to have gone to the wrong candidate. Given that the outcome in Florida 
determined the national victor, this is not just news but a critical 
challenge to the legitimacy of the presidency.

So how did the media report the results of the ballot reexamination?
Overwhelmingly, they chose to lead with the news that was comfortable, 
uncontroversial-- and seven months old. "In Election Review, Bush Wins 
Without Supreme Court Help," was The Wall Street Journal's headline on its 
story, paralleling The New York Times' "Study of Disputed Florida Ballots 
Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote." That angle would be fine if
you believed that the Supreme Court was the most important aspect of the 
story; but what about the presidency?

Other members of the consortium emphasized the most Bush-friendly aspects of 
the story: "Bush Still Had Votes to Win in a Recount, Study Finds," was the 
Tribune Co.'s Los Angeles Times' main headline on its report, matching The 
Washington Post's "Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush" and CNN.com's 
"Florida Recount Study: Bush Still Wins." The St. Petersburg Times' Web site
put it succinctly: "Recount: Bush." While some of these outlets tried to 
convey greater complexity in subheads, all these headlines obscure the fact 
that the outlets' most comprehensive recount put Gore ahead of Bush.

Emphasizing the old and conventional while playing down the new and 
controversial is a recipe for being ignored, and sure enough, few outlets 
that were not part of the consortium did much with the findings. A story 
that may well be mentioned in high school history classes a hundred years 
from now didn't even merit an editorial comment from most newspapers.

It's tempting to attribute this coyness to Sept. 11, and news outlets' 
reluctance to undermine the legitimacy of the presidency when the country is 
at war. But the coverage of the consortium's findings is similar to the way 
earlier media recounts were handled; even the most preliminary Miami 
Herald/USA Today ballot stories prompted "Bush Really Won" stories across
the country. Similarly, when Bush's inauguration was greeted by raucous 
marchers contesting his victory, many outlets played down the significance 
of the protests. The New York Times virtually ignored them. 

War or no war, many journalists are instinctively protective of the 
legitimacy of the institutions they cover. But the job of a journalist is 
not to promote but to question. The theory behind the First Amendment is 
that the system will be strengthened by an unflinching look at the system's 
flaws. In looking back at the results of the Florida election, the media
flinched. 

---
Jim Naureckas is the editor of Extra!, the magazine of the media watch group
FAIR. A version of this appeared in New York's Newsday (11/15/01).