Corrections: In Which The NYT Perpetuates the Myth It Created - That George Bush Won Florida in 2000

[kpete]

Corrections: In Which The NYT Perpetuates the Myth It Created - That George Bush Won Florida in 2000
2000 Elections | Media | New York Times
by Larry Beinhart | May 27, 2008 - 10:18am

"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 they 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, November 12, 2001

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

........................

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:

more at:
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/14875

[boobooday]

1. Hope I'm only the first of many to rec this. n/t

[CottonBear]

2. I read that in the Times and I was appalled. Ms. Stanley is a liar. n/t

[gademocrat7]

3. K & R

[underpants]

4. Rec'ing and book marking

I remember reading the NYT take on it that directly contridicts their own headline.

[peacetalksforall]

5. Ms. Stanley, Liz Trotta, Katherine Harris, Michelle Bachman, Jeanne Schmidt ...

Ann Coulter... The Republicans get a lot of females to do some dirty work for them.

Feinstein, ..... oops.

[KoKo]

6. Kick for the Truth.... K&R!

[robinlynne]

7. and I have a friend who works at the U of Chicago, which did that analysis/count. It was

NOT by a small margin, but a large margin. And the U of Chicago is contractually bound not to speak about the results of the count, by the consortium of newspapers themselves!

[OnTheOtherHand]

10. but NORC has posted complete data files

http://www2.norc.org/fl/results/index.html

I don't know what it is specifically that the principal investigators(?) aren't allowed to say or talk about, but the data tell a story, no doubt.

[satya]

12. Thanks, just saw your post after I asked my question. nt

[OnTheOtherHand]

13. another useful source is Keating 2002

http://www.aei.org/docLib/20040526_KeatingPaper.pdf

I don't know why it's AEI that chose to archive this paper, but the paper has lots of good information.

[satya]

11. Do you know if anyone has tried to get the results under FOIA? nt

[mistertrickster]

37. Might not apply since the newspapers are not officially part of the government. nt

[mod mom]

34. Thank God for the internet. MSM promotes fascism.

:mad:

[electropop]

8. I've heard others spouting this point recently - is it the latest Talking Points Memo from Norquist?

or Rove? I remember pretty clearly the consortium's conclusion. I am surprised they think the public will have forgotten already. No, we're not just going to "get over it" (to quote Scalia).

[Lugnut]

9. K&R n/t

[kster]

14. Mainstream Journo Penning Election Reform Column Has Article Rejected for First Time in Career!

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=1376

A pattern is emerging :)

K&R

[suffragette]

15. "It is also very well buried."

"There it was. A very simple statement. Al Gore got more votes in Florida than George Bush.

It is also very well buried."

They thought that by intentionally burying that statement they could have it both ways. They could perpetrate the lie that GWB won by planting it in people's minds with the titles and the majority of the article, but would not have to answer charges that they entirely ignored that one extremely important point by not including it all.

What they did not think was that people would persist enough through all the dirt they had heaped on top of that statement to dig it up and let others know the truth.

They thought they had buried it deeply enough that they could get away with the lie.

They were wrong.

[JDPriestly]

41. Information from the published Keating Paper.

Since the media consortium’s findings indicated that Gore could have won a full
statewide recount of all votes (all undervotes and overvotes), there has been debate about
the likelihood of such a recount. Judge Terry Lewis, assigned by the Florida Supreme
Court to oversee a statewide recount of undervotes – which was terminated by the U.S.
Supreme Court – wrote in a note during the recount2 and has said in interviews3 that
feedback from counties may have led him to order all votes counted. Based on that
assertion, some Democratic advocates have said that Gore would likely have won the
statewide recount that was underway. Needless to say, in a dispute that was litigated at
every step – twice to the U.S. Supreme Court – any changes considered by Judge Lewis
would not have passed without scrutiny.

. . .

Yield of Presidential Recount Votes by Technology and Undervote-Overvote,
Using Dimple Punchcard Standard and All Candidate Marks on Optical Ballots,
Florida 2000
Undervotes
Technology Net Gain
Votomatic Punchcard Bush 416 votes
Datavote Punchcard Bush 24 votes
Optical Ballots Gore 140 votes
Total Bush 300 votes
Overvotes
Technology Net Gain
Votomatic Punchcard Gore 225 votes
Datavote Punchcard Bush 2 votes
Optical Ballots Gore 662 votes
Total Gore 885 votes
Undervotes and Overvotes
Technology Net Gain
Votomatic Punchcard Bush 191 votes
Datavote Punchcard Bush 26 votes
Optical Ballots Gore 802 votes
Total <-------------------------Gore 585 votes---------------> (RESULT)

. . . .

But overvoted optical ballots often had errors that left
potential votes to be claimed in a recount. The most common was the “double-bubble”
first revealed by the Orlando Sentinel’s recount in Lake County.4 On those ballots, a
voter marks a candidate and then where it says “Write In Candidate,” the voter follows
the instructions and writes the candidate’s name. If both the candidate and “write-in”
ovals are filled (or arrows completed), machines read an overvote and presidential choice
4 Story 19 December 2000 shows votes could have been reclaimed in hand review of overvoted ballots.
is invalidated. Since the write-in was not a “qualified write-in candidate,” state election
law5 says that the write-in is void and the vote counts for the candidate chosen. Several
counties review those votes on election night as standard procedure.

http://www.aei.org/docLib/20040526_KeatingPaper.pdf

The report goes on to explain the reason that Gore won whe overvotes were counted while Bush won when undervotes were counted: Africa-Americans tended to over-vote, and whites tended to undervote. This may have had to do with the type of machines used for voting in African-American versus white precincts. It may also have had to do with cultural factors such as the voter's confidence that he or she was voting correctly. (My opinions.) It might also have to do with other cultural factors or even experience in voting and age. At any rate, that is what the report states.

We can learn something about how to explain to voters what to do with their ballots from this report. We need to tell voters who vote on regular ballots that they should not check a box for a name and write in the name. That may result in their vote being lost or not counted.

[suffragette]

42. I wonder how much of the overvotes had to do with emphasis

a double strong yes to Gore and a "hell no" to Bush.

You make a great point about voter education so that this won't be a factor.

And, of course, we must continue to be vigilant about not letting them get away with the voter repression that they've used to make these elections appear close.

[Wilms]

16. The web has a lot of stories about stories she has gotten wrong.

So, who better to hire? Right NYT?

It's not like this is a one-time occurrence, either. By now whatever critical savvy Alessandra Stanley brings to her work has long been overshadowed by her reputation for making repeated, careless errors in her columns (see: Reference Tone, Gawker, me across two websites).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/14/alessandra-stanley-no-cr_n_86609.html

There have been some complaints regarding the accuracy of her reporting.<2><3> Her column of September 5, 2005 drew particular attention. Discussing coverage of relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina, Stanley wrote that Geraldo Rivera "nudged an Air Force rescue worker out of the way so his camera crew could tape him as he helped lift an older woman in a wheelchair to safety."<4> Rivera complained that the story was inaccurate and threatened to sue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandra_Stanley

Alessandra Stanley’s often alarming corrections were the subject of much discussion this past year. It largely began because of the ridiculous and embarrassing Geraldo nudge that wasn’t. Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Tribune gave her a kick in a column, citing some of her errors (the link to the piece is no longer active), and then John Cook of Reference Tone dove in here. Gawker got in on the act and kept after her with its "Alessandra Stanley Watch."

http://www.regrettheerror.com/newspapers/gawker-does-the-math-on-alessandra-stanley

The answer: Yes! She is! We checked 2005 corrections rates on 19 Times cultural critics, and we discovered that Stanley can comfortably claim the title as Most Inaccurate 2005. Indeed, she's more than twice as inaccurate as the average non-Stanley critic at the Times. (The other 18 averaged a 7 percent correction rate.)

http://gawker.com/news/new-york-times/the-alessandra-watch-how-wrong-is-she-145318.php

[Pooka Fey]

17. K&R

[annabanana]

18. Jesus will it EVER end?

lies on lies in perpetuity

[valerief]

19. A coup is a coup is a coup is a coup. Why would the media machine

NOT participate in the coup?

[pretzel4gore]

22. exactly...

because the election was stolen, and that gave way to the rifling of the US economy, and god knows what else, Iraq being just tip of iceberg etc, to fortify the lie is a criminal act, and someday maybe the nytimes will be prosecuted for it. The following is self explanatory, but anyone who watches notices the lie that Lee Oswald was the killer of JFK in '63 is constantly reinforced, in often random ettings. Avon Books (Harper Collins) published anderson. He cranked this one out in 2000, less then a year after JFK jr's death. And he blames (goes out of his way to blame, in fact) John Jr for the crash- which made the bush youngster's theft of white house just a wee bit easier, in case anyone noticed. I dream of the day we 'citizens' tabulate all these lying liars, identify them and run them down like dogs....:)

>I just read 'The Day John Died' by christopher anderson, a contributer at time mag and senior editor at 'People' who also wrote 21 other books, the most famous being 'the day Diana died'... on page 333 of his JFK jr book, anderson writes "...blah blah did not prevent John flying to Havana on Oct23/97 for a historic meeting with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. There, 30 years after the Cuban missile crisis, John interviewed his father's bearded nemesis... blah blah blah... John was surprised when Castro professed to be a great admirer of JFK, and when he seemed to apologise for refusing Lee Harvey Oswald an entry visa into Cuba in October 1963 - an act that almost certainly would have prevented Oswald from being in Dallas one month later."
<
First, no where in the literature i've seen is there any mention Oswald wanted to SERIOUSLY visit Cuba in Oct/63- he was married with chiildren and employed full time at TSBD in Dallas, his family's only income. Maybe Fidel, trying to impress John Jr with his respect for his father 30 years after the fact indeed told John this, or maybe John indeed said Fidel told him that, small talk among friends etc, or maybe neither man said anything about Oswald- maybe it was a hanger on like dominck dunne or william buckley (?) or so on maybe said this, to cause mischief harhar...after all, it's PETTY detail compared with known facts. What matters is it's pure nonsense in real terms seen in light of junyer bush becoming president in fall 2000, and anderson is a skank for using his hack book to buck up the big lie that a 'lone gunman' was responsible etc etc. I post this here because even if a couple more people are informed about the almost psychopathic nature of the lying liars who are everywhere creating 'mischief'- and giggling merrily as they walk away, winking at the reactionary punks who asses they kiss, as they're slipped envelopes fulla crisp twenties....(not that anderson did that, but it's the nature of dishonest people to expect rewards etc)

[rosesaylavee]

20. K & R

[DeeDeeNY]

21. K & R

[johnaries]

23. How can they tell a lie that's so easy to check?

Anyone who can spell "google" can find the truth.

[JHB]

30. With well-practiced ease, it would seem.

How many who can spell "google" will look for the truth?

[petgoat]

24. Another Source for the "Gore Got More Votes in Florida" Story

WaPo. Dan Keating.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12623-2001Nov11.html

Notice the deceptive headline: "Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush"

But underneath, the article at least has the honesty to state that Gore got
more legal votes:

"An examination of uncounted ballots throughout Florida found enough where voter
intent was clear to give Gore the narrowest of margins."


Here's how the confusion was engendered. In May 2001, preliminary results on the
NORC study were released, indicating that Bush had gotten more votes.

But the study went on. In the fall, the final results were to be released.
The Nat'l Lawyer's Guild was preparing a campaign to impeach the "felonious
five" Supremes who handed the 2000 election to Bush. But what happened?
19 Muslim lunatics with boxcutters allegedly paralyzed the US air defense for
100 minutes.

When the report was finally released in November anthrax was in the mail, Bush
was at war, and quibbling over hanging chads seemed trivial. Most of the news
stories about the NORC report put such a heavy spin on the story that they made
the paragraph at the end showing that Gore actually got more legal votes seem
like a non-issue.

[Gman]

25. What was even more bizarre was the airplane crash in New York City

the day the consortium results were to be announced. The tail section came off of a 737 and it crashed. The news of the crash dominated the next several days. The only thing reported about the consortium was that Bush would have won. They never mentioned it was in only one of like seven scenarios.

[petgoat]

26. My understanding was that 9/11 pre-empted the NORC info

If you have info that it was the Jamiaca Bay crash of 11/14
that pre-empted it instead, I'd like to know about it.

Truthers are about truth.

[Gman]

35. Here's a link to a WaPo article

dated 11/13/01:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/elections2000/recount/front.htm

This page says it was "published late Sunday November 11", but also has a link to a Slate article dated 11/13. And, this New York Times article is dated 11/12.

But the way I remember it especially here on DU was that we were expecting the (what we thought would be) the huge bombshell that the report would bring on 11/14 and were just horror struck, not so much by the plane crash, but the fact that the plane crashed on the exact same day the report was released. Maybe in light of the links above, there was a scheduled press conference that day or something planned right after the report's release. I don't know. But the crash and the reports release were IMHO entirely too close together and entirely too coincidental.

And no, it was definitely NOT 9/11 itself that preempted the report's coverage. There was still some 9/11 coverage, but (I believe) a lot of coverage about invading Afghanistan and (for sure) a lot of coverage about the Anthrax attacks (IIRC). The plane crash completed the smothering of the report.

[petgoat]

43. We're talking about two different things here.

1. The disruption the 9/11 attacks imposed on the news that Gore got
more Florida votes...

2. the distraction of the Jamaica Bay plane crash with respect to
the November releases of the NORC report that Gore got more votes.

[Gman]

44. And I guess my point is that

at least I was hoping we were far enough past 9/11 that the announcement would drop the bombshell. Then the plane crash.

[pnwmom]

27. K & R. n/t

[Lasher]

28. Here's a good related website

Citizens for Legitimate Government

[nankerphelge]

29. Another nail in the coffin...

of print "news."

[The Political Jerk]

31. Alessandra Stanley gets things wrong for a living...

From 2001-2005 alone: http://www.referencetone.com/2005/09/wrongest-critic.html

-The Political Jerk

[PinkyisBlue]

32. Just get over it.

They are rewriting history. The history books in public schools will relate that Bush legitimately won the presidential election in 2000, that Iraq was responsible for the attacks against the US on Sept 11, 2001, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, etc. If the media outlets continue to be complicit in these deceptions, the actual truth will be buried and forgotten. Anyone challenging these lies will be seen as left-wing nuts.

[redqueen]

38. No. Let the whitewashers whitewash... but "getting over it", if that means

shutting up, well fuck the hell outta that.

IMO the truth is worth speaking up for.

[fascisthunter]

39. Sorry.... You Can Get Over It

I never will.

[PinkyisBlue]

45. I was actually being sarcastic. I will never get over it, either.

"Just get over it" were the words spoken by Antonin Scalia, in telling the Democrats to forget about the infamous Supreme Court decision of 2000.

The media is rewriting history. In 50 years, the history books will say how Bush beat Gore by a wide margin in Florida to win the Presidential election, that Iraq attacked the USA on Sept 11, 2001, and how courageous and righteous our brave President Bush was to lead our country into Iraq to defend our freedom.

A lot of people believe what they hear or read in the large media outlets. They will see the headline about Bush winning the votes in Florida and this is what will stick in their minds. Eventually it will be forgotten that Gore actually won the election or that our original purpose for attacking Iraq was bogus, as there were no WMDs.

[unpossibles]

33. ah, the "liberal media" strikes again

somehow they always seem to "accidentally" take shots at their own side.. </sarcasm>

[mistertrickster]

36. Thanks for this post. The Times et al. carefully buried the real story--the overvotes.

They buried it under a host of meaningless scenarios.

Florida law is perfectly clear--a ballot that shows the intent of the voter is a legal vote. Overvotes show the intent of the voter. The over-votes should have and would have been counted if the Supreme Court hadn't violated its own CONservative vow of non-interference of states' rights issues, of which voting is a prime example.

Seeing the headlines, "After Recount, Bush Still Wins" just made me want to puke. The fix was in, and American democracy as we were lead to believe in it was dead, killed by the ruling class for money and power.

[JDPriestly]

40. I was one of those (perhaps few) who actually looked at the

results of the consortium's review when it was first published.

There were a number of possible ways to count the votes. As I recall, you could take a sort of quiz in which you could choose which ways you would have thought it fair to count the votes. A number of ways seemed reasonable to me. And I looked at each method that seemed possibly to be reasonable. Under all but one of them, the result was that Gore won. I did not know the result before choosing the method by which the votes would be counted. So I chose, not the result, but the counting method. That is what convinced me that under a fair counting, Gore won.

I believe that those who argue that Bush would have won anyway did not determine that by selecting a method for counting the votes but by selecting the result that they wanted and then accepting that the method that caused that result was the method that should have been used.

The actual results of the consortium need to be publicized fully and again. I am convinced that the press has hidden the originally published results to protect Bush.