(updated below)
Following last Sunday's Democratic presidential debate on ABC News' This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Dennis Kucinich's campaign asked ABC News to address issues it had with treatment Rep. Kucinich (D-Ohio) received both during the debate and afterward in ABC's online coverage. In an email sent out to supporters on Wednesday, the campaign said it "submitted objections and inquiries to ABC News representatives on Monday and Tuesday. ABC News representatives have failed to respond - or even acknowledge - those objections and inquiries." I confirmed with the Kucinich campaign yesterday that it has subsequently been forwarded the same response ABC News Executive Director Andrea Jones sent to The Washington Post and Time magazine.
ABC News representatives felt it necessary to answer the Kucinich campaign's objections when Time magazine's National Political Correspondent Karen Tumulty queried them. Writing on the Time blog Swampland, Tumulty initially says of the Kucinich team's issues with ABC's treatment (which included Kucinich not having a chance to speak until 28 minutes into the debate), "These all seemed like fair complaints to me, so I asked ABC News to respond." Then Tumulty says, "In an e-mail, Executive Director Andrea Jones answered him [Kucinich] point by point."
While I give Tumulty credit for contacting ABC News, her investigative journalism unfortunately ends there. Once she receives the email from Jones, Tumulty slips into stenography mode. Jones' "point by point" response to the Kucinich campaign's complaints does not in itself exculpate or dispel any of ABC's wrongdoing. Tumulty fails to assess the accuracy and logic of Jones' answers.
First, just so we're all up to speed, here are the issues (an aggregate of the thousands of complaints received during and after ABC's debate coverage) that the Kucinich campaign asked ABC News to address:
* Congressman Kucinich was apparently deliberately cropped out of a "Politics Page" photo of the candidates.
* Sometime Monday afternoon, after Congressman Kucinich took a commanding lead in ABC's own on-line "Who won the Democratic debate" survey, the survey was dropped from prominence on the website.
* ABC News has not officially reported the results of its online survey.
* After the results of that survey showed Congressman Kucinich winning handily, ABC News, sometime Monday afternoon, replaced the original survey with a second survey asking "Who is winning the Democratic debate?"
* During the early voting Monday afternoon and evening, U.S. Senator Barack Obama was in the lead. By sometime late Monday or early Tuesday morning, Congressman Kucinich regained the lead by a wide margin in this second survey.
* Sometime Tuesday morning, ABC News apparently dropped the second survey from prominence or killed it entirely.
* AND, as every viewer of the nationally televised Sunday Presidential forum is aware, Congressman Kucinich was not given an opportunity to answer a question from moderator George Stephanopoulos until 28 minutes into the program.
Now back to Tumulty commenting on Jones' response [emphasis below is mine]:
This gist of her answer is this: She denies that Kucinich was cropped out of any photo, noting that "there are 20 photos live on the ABC News website, Mr. Kucinich is in a number of them and there is even one of him and his wife. He is one of 6 candidates who got his own photo in the slide show. As for the images, clearly nothing was cropped, the image in question was shot by Charlie Neibergall of the AP not ABC."
FALSE. Had Tumulty - Time magazine's National Political Correspondent and former member of the White House press corps - simply located the original AP photo (which, at most, should've taken a few minutes online), she would've found Kucinich in it and realized the following version ABC News prominently displayed online after the debate had, indeed, been cropped:
So Jones
either lied when she said "clearly nothing was cropped" or was
misinformed by someone on her staff. Since Tumulty seems to think her
job ends with receiving answers from an ABC News spokesperson, she
doesn't question the veracity of Jones' assertion, which is clearly false.
Adding to its duplicity, ABC News has now completely replaced the original photograph in question. If you click on the link in Tumulty's post (which is supposed to bring you to that photo), you are now taken to a wholly different shot that includes Dennis Kucinich and is currently the default debate photo sitting on the ABC News website.
So, in case you're keeping score, first ABC disappears Kucinich from a photo by cropping him out, then denies it, then later disappears the original cropped photo, replacing it with a separate photo that includes Kucinich, making it appear as if nothing improper ever occurred.
Eat your heart out Fox News.
Tumulty does later post an update after she manages (she doesn't say how) to find her way to a page on the site Pinkraygun that shows the original AP photo and the doctored ABC photo side-by-side. This compels Tumulty to gingerly concede "there does in fact appear to have been some cropping." First, it was either cropped or it wasn't. "Some cropping" gives the impression a whole cropping didn't occur, which it did. Second, if there was "some cropping," then logic follows that Jones either did some lying or some misinforming. That, in turn, means Tumulty should be doing some follow up with Jones. She does not. Third, a question for Tumulty and her editors over at Time: How did you fail to bring this simple fact to light yourselves? You had three main points to investigate - whether a photo was cropped, whether a poll was manipulated and whether Kucinich was allotted a fair amount of time. Arguably, the cropped photo was the most simple and quick of the three to verify. Did you attempt to find this on your own? If so, what's your excuse for initially failing to obtain such readily available evidence? If not, what's your excuse for failing to pursue this evidence in the first place?
On to the poll(s):
She notes that the poll was and is live on ABC's website. (When I checked it, Kucinich was still winning, with Barack Obama a distant second.) She also notes the poll's disclaimer that it is "not a scientific survey," which seems like a decent reason for ABC not to treat it as a news story.
MISLEADING. Jones' statement circumvents the facts and the original thrust of the Kucinich campaign's complaint about the poll. Tumulty's unobtrusive reporting gives the impression the poll has always been up on ABC's site in clear view and at no time were changes made to it.
FACT: The original poll, prominently displayed, asked, "Who won the Democratic debate?" Once Kucinich jumped ahead, this poll was scuttled from its prominence on the site. As it became clear Kucinich was trouncing his competition, ABC just happened to decide to post a new poll asking, "Who is winning the Democratic debate?" As the Kucinich campaign (and Tumulty) correctly cited, Barack Obama had an early lead in this second poll; but when Kucinich pulled ahead by a wide margin, ABC then dropped this poll from prominence, too. (Because the Kucinich camp had difficulty finding the poll after ABC moved it, they questioned whether ABC may have buried the poll "or killed it entirely." It appears ABC didn't kill it entirely; they just made it difficult for users work to find - which, as anyone who knows anything about online usability, is nearly tantamount to killing it).
Though of lesser importantance (due to the current unverifiable nature of online polls), Tumulty still manages to mishandle Jones' explanation of why ABC News didn't report the poll results. This issue is about nuance and context. Not exactly Tumulty's and the mainstream media's forte.
Yes, the online poll is "not a scientific survey"* (incidentally, it's verboten to mention in the mainstream media that phone surveys, many of which include leading and misleading questions, are often far from scientific accountings as well). But since news outlets (possibly ABC among them) have certainly noted some online polls in the past but in context of their scientific shortcomings, and considering ABC's shenanigans concerning Kucinich, it seems either intellectually dishonest or misinformed for Tumulty to give Jones the free pass "which seems like a decent reason for ABC not to treat it as a news story."
Does Tumulty honestly believe it's "a decent reason"? Or does she merely believe it's decent enough because the target of the question is ABC News and the questioner is the not-so-"viable" candidate Kucinich?
I should note here that Tumulty frames her post with the opening line: "Should the networks and interest groups that have been sponsoring the seemingly endless series of debates and candidate forums start limiting their invitations to those contenders who seem, by whatever definition, 'viable'?" She then claims to like "the idea of including candidates from the second tier--and beyond--in these settings," saying, "You never know when lightning may strike, and how is an underfinanced long-shot going to get a breakout moment otherwise?" and that "candidates such as Dennis Kucinich often are the only ones giving voice to ideas--like single-payer health care and a quick withdrawal from Iraq--that have not been embraced by the leading candidates, despite having significant support among the party rank and file." Yet Tumulty seems incapable of embracing such basic tenets of a democratic political process; instead, she reverts to entrenched media establishment dogma to round out her post's frame: "Still, having decided to include them, should they be given the same amount of time and attention as the leaders in the race?"
This is the journalist we're going to trust to get to the bottom of whether ABC News treated Dennis Kucinich fairly?
Finally, there's ABC's defense of Kucinich receiving so little airtime during the debate and, once again, Tumulty's stenographic framing and conclusions [emphasis below is mine]:
As for Kucinich's complaint that he was not given a question in the first 28 minutes of the debate, Jones notes: "He may not have been addressed in the first 28 minutes, but he was the only candidate questioned in his own segment on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, two weeks in a row, that appearance is posted online as well. Also. Mr. Kucinich was the only candidate to address healthcare in Sunday's debate, and that response was immediately clipped and posted on the ABC News website." Her bottom line: "After back to back appearances on ABC News' This Week with George Stephanopoulos, clearly their claim is not substantiated by the facts nor by the extensive coverage of his candidacy on the ABCNews.com website."
First, Jones' "bottom line" skirts the issue at hand: she concedes ABC's debate moderators failed to address Kucinich in the first 28 minutes of the forum (though she frames her concession with the words "he may not have been addressed" rather than "he wasn't addressed," incorporating shades of doubt, as if this were somehow open to interpretation), but claims that ABC News has provided Kucinich much airtime overall.
Yet here's the real bottom line: In any equitable debate, no candidate should have to remain silent for the first 28 minutes. Period. This is not only unfair to Congressman Kucinich, but to all American citizens for whom news outlets such as ABC are supposed to be informing their decision-making process instead of acting to unduly manipulate it.
What's more, Jones' claim that Kucinich "was the only candidate questioned in his own segment on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, two weeks in a row" and that he had "back to back appearances" on this program is blatantly misleading. (I must admit this one initially slipped by me until, while fact-checking another element of this story, I stumbled across the truth in a conversation I had yesterday with Kucinich campaign spokesman Andy Juniewicz. More on that below).
FACT: Kucinich has made one appearance on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Jones has the audacity to count Kucinich's appearance at this ABC debate as his second appearance on the show in which - breathing even new life into the word "truthiness" - he's received "his own segment." Can Jones explain how a candidate receives his own segment during a debate? What in the world is she talking about?
Moreover, in a statistical analysis of the debate performed by USA Election Polls, Kucinich was given less time to speak than any candidate with the exception of former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel. Yet it gets worse: in the critical first half of the debate (the time when viewers tend to be most engaged), Kucinich received just 3.4% of airtime, the least of all the candidates. To put that in context, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama combined to chew up 60.4% of airtime during the first half of the debate.
USA Election Polls also points out:
In fact, even Chris Dodd got more air time than Kucinich which is ridiculous because Kucinich is beating Dodd in the majority of state polls. So if the emphasis was on giving the most time to the leaders in the polls, then what was Dodd doing speaking more than Kucinich?
Nevertheless, Tumulty and Time magazine show no interest in such further incontrovertible proof of the unfair treatment to which ABC News subjected Congressman Kucinich. Instead, Tumulty follows up Jones' "bottom line" by closing her post with these thoughts:
I honestly don't know what the right balance is here when you are dealing with such a large field of candidates, most of whom don't have a prayer of winning. What do you think? Was Kucinich treated unfairly? Or should he be included at all?*
*Not a scientific survey.
Cute. But parting shot at the Kucinich campaign aside, shouldn't Tumulty and Time magazine provide the facts in a piece titled "Dennis Kucinich vs. ABC News"? Instead, we're presented with a slanted, inaccurate, misleading and ill-researched breakdown of events that ends with Tumulty floating the question of whether Kucinich should be allowed to attend these debates in the first place.
And sadly, thanks to The Washington Post, that wasn't the worst coverage of the Kucinich-ABC incident by a major news outlet.
In a post titled "Kucinich Mad at ABC" over at The Washington Post blog The Sleuth (oh the irony), journalist Mary Ann Akers (a former reporter for The Washington Times as well as NPR) doesn't try to hide her contempt for Kucinich while barreling ahead without concern for facts or fact-checking.
She opens her post:
Don't expect to see too many more appearances by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) on ABC News.
An apparently irate Kucinich sent out a letter to supporters Wednesday accusing the network of ignoring him in the Democratic presidential debate on Sunday's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."
So since Kucinich - along with, and spurred on by, thousands of other American citizens - objected to ABC's handling of the debate, should we expect, and accept, that ABC has a right to actively work to further marginalize him?
If that's Akers' frame, you can guess where this is going.
Also, because she fails to cite any source, we must assume her characterization of Kucinich as "apparently irate" hinges not on fact but projection. And as it turns out, that is exactly the case.
Yesterday, when I contacted Kucinich campaign spokesman Andy Juniewicz, he addressed Akers unfounded assertion:
"Congressman Kucinich was not irate. Nothing in the email communication expressed anger," said the soft-spoken Juniewicz. "It was just a delineation of what we were hearing from thousands of people who contacted us, many of whom weren't even Kucinich supporters. We asked ABC to respond to the questions they raised." When I asked if Akers or someone else at The Washington Post had spoken with anyone in his campaign about this purported demonstration of anger, Mr. Juniewicz said, "No. No one."
Note to Akers and The Washington Post: Before the Internets, there was the telephone. Some news outlets, though fewer and fewer these days, still find it handy for checking facts.
Moving right along, Akers then runs through roughly the same terrain on which Tumulty trodded, but her condescension and bias is profligate and shameless.
Among Kucinich's charges: he was "deliberately cropped out" of photos; after he took a "commanding lead" in ABC's online survey, the survey was mysteriously "dropped from prominence on the web site"; and "as every viewer of the nationally televised Sunday presidential forum is aware" Kucinich was not asked a question until 28 minutes into the program. (Everyone clocked that at 28 minutes, right?)
"Among
Kucinich's charges" blunts the fact they've all been proven to be true
(something Akers apparently has no interest in uncovering or
presenting). Use of the word "mysteriously" not only mocks the
assertion that the poll was buried but conjures the mainstream media's
favorite attack on uncomfortable truths: it must be the work of those
crazy conspiracy theorists (Akers also disregards the full story - previously addressed above in this post - behind ABC's bizarre and devious manipulation of the debate's polls). "Everyone clocked that at 28
minutes, right?" is not only disparaging but gives the ludicrous impression the Kucinich campaign
is contending everyone noticed the precise number of minutes
Kucinich had been shut out of the debate; rather, the campaign was noting a simple fact: everyone watching certainly saw that Kucinich didn't get a chance to speak for an usually long duration of time.
We deserve more than such absurd manufactured nitpicking from
Akers and The Washington Post. Rather than chasing their tail to
portray Kucinich in a poor light, think of how much easier it would've
been to just present the facts. And to search them out.
But hey, according to Akers, "ABC News Executive Director Andrea Jones
addressed every charge Kucinich made." Incredibly, Akers not only
embraces Jones' answers without question, but also unwittingly contradicts
Jones' claim that the photo in question was never cropped by providing
the ABC debate photo below her post. In other words, the AP photo that
ABC undeniably cropped is sitting below Akers' post in which she
contends no cropping occurred. Again, all one needs to do is locate the original AP photo. And presto! Cropping mystery solved.
Again, too, Jones is either lying or misinformed, and Akers and The Washington Post (along with Tumulty and Time magazine) are complicit in perpetuating this falsehood.
Escaping Akers' notice or range of journalistic concern as well is ABC's wholesale swapping out of its cropped photo with an altogether new one in which Kucinich appears alongside the rest of the Democratic candidates. ABC News, in effect, has worked diligently to cover up this despicable act, one worthy of Fox News and Orwell's vision of totalitarian media manipulation.
In their coverage of the Kucinich-ABC incident, Time magazine's Tumulty and The Washington Post's Akers wind up crystallizing the extent to which big media rigs the game against a candidate like Congressman Kucinich. In defense of sound and equitable journalism, it is incumbent upon both Time magazine and The Washington Post to correct the record on ABC's actions, and the rest of the news media to hold ABC News accountable for this disgraceful performance.
No news organization - especially one charged with facilitating part of our electoral process - should be able to so grossly transgress such basic journalistic standards and not be held to account. This isn't a partisan issue. Congressman Kucinich's chances of capturing the Democratic nomination are irrelevant to this matter.
This speaks to the viability of our national press.
At a time when the mainstream media is struggling to retain and rebuild both its credibility and coveted market share among Americans, it ignores ABC's actions at its own peril.
UPDATE: I'll be away until after Labor Day weekend (wedding - not mine), but I first wanted to say thanks for your additional insights, passionate (yet substantive) comments and very kind words. To first-time readers, welcome! To everyone, by all means, keep the conversation going while I'm away. And if you want to do something else to keep (or turn up) the heat on ABC, request that this story does not stop here. Don't just contact ABC or other mainstream news outlets - contact Raw Story, Salon, Think Progress, Media Matters, FAIR.org and Truthout, and respectfully request they cover this story. Along with Crooks and Liars, these major alternative news outlets get the mainstream's attention and greatly increase the chances of forcing the mainstream's hand. More than anything, ABC wants this story to drop right down the memory hole: it's up to you to make sure that doesn't happen.
The Kucinich campaign needs to file a complaint against Disney/ABC with the FCC. The public needs to inundate the FCC with e-mails supporting Kucinich's complaint. ABC clearly indulged in propaganda, and deliberately ill-served, betrayed, the public's interest.
Posted by: Paul | August 30, 2007 at 09:03 AM
Your piece is a perfect example of how useful lazy journalists are to people with an agenda and a need to manipulate the press.
The facts of the story, had Tumulty bothered to establish them in the first place, coould have been summed up in one opening para, the rest could then have been a clear analysis based on those facts. Instead she simply reported and wrote misleading verbiage and "padding" which illuminates nothing and no one except her and her own incomptence.
It then takes 8 pages to deconstruct the piece, properly analyze the original story AND the story resulting from Tumulty's shoddy work and then correct it.
Thus truth gets buried in lies and obfuscations.
If Tumulty had done her job responsibly in the first place, you wouldn;t have to do all this work--effectively for nothing.
No doubt she'll completely ignore your work and carry on regardless.
Nonetheless, this kind of thing has to be done---well done.
Posted by: Britisher | August 30, 2007 at 09:32 AM
I am a Kucinich fan because I believe that the REAL POWERS that are running the world are scared of him. This sort of organized censure of a LEGITIMATE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE who wins every debate they let him into should rally all of us to support him in the primary. What has happened to our elections? Twice we've been handed a tyrant, unelected and guilty of rigging the only voice we have in our government, yet no one seems to really care that much. Like they say, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."
Posted by: Raeffe | August 30, 2007 at 09:55 AM
Hey RGKahn.....you're thoughtful and I bet I agree with you on most issues, but you said one thing that was clearly wrong:
"...the old world journalism of Murrow, Cronkite and Rather is dead and buried."
Actually, you just posted at a site that continues that great Murrow (and Ramparts Magazine from the sixties and I.F. "Izzy" Stone the great muckraker) tradition of reporting. Your eloquent words towards the end of your post perfectly describes what MediaBloodhound has been doing and continues to do: "....reporting requires "hard work" as a famous politician was heard to say in the not too distant past. Report what was said, what was done, when it happened, by whom and against whom. Being truthful would also be a good idea."
Couldn't have said it better myself.
MB: keep on keepin' on!
Posted by: edrita | August 30, 2007 at 09:59 AM
Excellent work digging in on this story. This is what more Americans need to realize. Another telling note to my mind is the live blogging that ABC's political reporter did on the debate:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/08/live-blogging-1.html
Not one mention of Kucinich by name. The closest he seems to come is one pre-emptive excuse to explain why the discussion on Iraq won't be covered in detail by mainstream media:
"8:32 am CT: Iraq discussions are not made for debates -- and we're reaching a point where there's nothing more interesting that can be said by Democratic candidates on the war -- except for the bomb-throwers."
The rest is the reporter making snarky comments on style and strategy without noting any of the audience reaction to candidates or the issues themselves. Self-censorship at its most distasteful.
I'm a Democracy Now! news consumer myself, so I don't see mainstream news that much (except when CrooksAndLiars posts clips or fair.org talks about them), and examples like this are the reasons why.
I hope this will increase awareness and support for moving debates out of private hands and back into those of a non-partisan group like the League of Women Voters again, and move us closer to public campaign funding.
Posted by: Kelly Logan | August 30, 2007 at 10:06 AM
Another perfect example of how Corporate Fascism is killing our Democracy.
The Corporate Empire has us citizens so brainwashed and scared, that we accept these things.
The sad thing is, even if K sues the crap outa them, and wins, it may all be too little, too late. Buried in the rubble of Paris Hilton and another Republican sex scandal, if the mainstream media covers it at all. Let us hope this story grows big legs!
Posted by: Al B Tross | August 30, 2007 at 01:24 PM
Excellent reporting. See here for my analysis ... http://paullevinson.blogspot.com/2007/08/ron-paul-has-company-now-abc-crops-out.html
ABC is an equal opportunity abuser of the democratic process. If it wasn't unconstitutional, I'll call upon the FCC to revoke ABC's licenses...
Posted by: Paul Levinson | August 30, 2007 at 02:27 PM
I appreciate that the reporter only parroted exactly ABC executive's response. I'm quite weary of reporters infusing fact with opinion. Pretending that editorials and opinions are news has a good deal to do with the fact that the news is not unbaised.
It's sad that the three most honest guys in the race (Kucinich, Gravel and Paul) are the three that have to fight for every second of air time they recieve.
I truly fair debate wouldn't dole out time based on poll standings. Each candidate would get the same amounf of questions, and /or the same amount of time to answer each question.
It's a travesty, especially since we the people are supposed to own the airwaves. ABC just leases them from us.
Posted by: Alexia For Ron Paul | August 30, 2007 at 02:54 PM
Why was George Stephanopoulos, a former employee and partisan of Hillary Clinton's husband, allowed to oversee a debate that featured if not promoted her, in the first place? That comes close to conflict of interest in my book.
(Just a rhetorical question. I know the real answer.)
Posted by: gkru | August 30, 2007 at 08:29 PM
Are you saying George Stephanopoulos might have a favorite in the democratic pack? Someone who is not Kucinich? Surely, you aren't suggesting there is any conflict of interest on is part?
Posted by: Enterik | August 30, 2007 at 08:58 PM
From the ABC transcript, here is the approximate # of times Stephanopoulos mentioned each candidates' names in the process of calling on them or asking opinions of them to candidates:
Clinton: 18
Obama: 17
Dodd: 10
Edwards, Richardson, Biden: each 7
Gravel: 6
Kucinich: 5
Lesson: You can influence voting by ignoring candidates and giving attention to others.
Posted by: Another Media Bloodhound | August 31, 2007 at 01:38 AM
George Staphapoopalus is a short man with no progressive vision. He was a spinmeister, as communications director and white house spokesman for Bill Clinton. That's about as non-journalistic in terms of impartial as you can get. I think it was all staphloccocapus. He's a draconian silence all debate type. Elitist. Like Hilarious Clinton. The 'I know better than you do' type. Now shut up and take your medicine.
Some of those east coasters who graduated from 'the big schools' think they pee knowledge and poop wisdom. When they have an opinion, its big man, and wo be unto the dude or dudette who tries to tell them otherwise.
I honestly don't know how stephandraculous got a news program. He's an elitist nerdling. I don't think he dug the way Dennis ran circles around him logically the week before. Georgie got nasty with him then too...trying to sucker Dennis in with questions about when would it be OK to use Nukes...and other crap like that.
I think this whole thing was Stephanapoulos. Not Disney, Not ABC, except for the fact that they hired the idiot. No corporate conspiracy, just Georgie doing his elitist mouthy pooping thing, replete with those nor'easter glib retorts, jabs, and back-handed putdowns. What a class act. Excuse me now, I gotta to wash up; I feel soiled.
Posted by: PopTartWrapper | September 01, 2007 at 02:41 AM
Thanks for the information. I've compiled it into a video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2DGfXA8DlE
Spread it around!
Posted by: Lorenzo | September 01, 2007 at 03:44 PM
Want to see where the links to those polls are? Check out this tongue in Cheek 'race call' video from Youtube. The links are in the 'more information' section, to the right of the moderator(me).
Posted by: Patrick Michaels | September 01, 2007 at 03:53 PM
Maybe this will help, eh?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Usxc09wn4DA
Posted by: Patrick Michaels | September 01, 2007 at 03:53 PM
Kucinich and Paul led their respective parties' polls.
So the guns are turned on them, the slights, the ignoring of the issues they present.
Same ol' same ol', nothing changes there.
The change must come from the People, and the perceptions they have of msm and of reality.
I don't hold out much hope for either.
If a talking head says they will "waste their vote" on Paul or Kucinich, that is implanted in their minds when they go to pull the lever. I'd guess in over 50% of the cases.
Posted by: farang | September 03, 2007 at 07:17 PM
Kucinich and Paul led their respective parties' polls.
So the guns are turned on them, the slights, the ignoring of the issues they present.
Same ol' same ol', nothing changes there.
The change must come from the People, and the perceptions they have of msm and of reality.
I don't hold out much hope for either.
If a talking head says they will "waste their vote" on Paul or Kucinich, that is implanted in their minds when they go to pull the lever. I'd guess in over 50% of the cases.
Posted by: farang | September 03, 2007 at 07:17 PM
With your permission I will be putting a snippet of this story up on the H.O.R.N. website along with a link back to the original.
Great reporting!
Susan
Headon Radio Network-"America's Liberal Voice!"
http://headonradionetwork.com/
CenTab-The Run To The White House 2008
http://centab.headonradionetwork.com/
Posted by: Susan | September 04, 2007 at 03:01 AM
Of course you may, Susan. Thank you. And thanks for spreading the word!
Posted by: MediaBloodhound | September 04, 2007 at 04:47 PM
The link WAAAAAYYY up at the top of the post that goes to the original AP photo is no longer operable. Don't know if you need/want to fix that or not, but there you go.....
Posted by: lowly grunt | September 27, 2007 at 10:54 PM
Can someone tell me why anyone watches TV anymore?
TURN OFF AND TUNE IN!!!
Posted by: Mags | September 28, 2007 at 07:13 AM
thanks baby
Posted by: sesli chat | January 11, 2009 at 10:12 AM