Blogger Conspiracy Theorists Ruin Journalism for Everyone

It makes me crazy when the corporate press lumps blogs on the left in with blogs on the right - to say nothing of political blogs in with the millions of other blog forms out there. During the CBS memo uproar, the party line in the corporate press was that "blogs" broke that story. I don't remember any of them being called conspiracy nuts in the NYT, but I may be mistaken. There certainly weren't any headlines about them like the one that tops today's 1300-word piece by Tom "TimesWatch-approved" Zeller that casts blogs critical of the way America votes as hysterical voices in the wilderness intent on spreading disproven conspiracy theories. Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried, it screams. Zeller is grateful to observe that experts were able to debunk the unmoored suggestions of conspiracy before they did any real harm - although many of the zealots are reluctant to give up the "most popular theories."

The story isn't only mocking and shallow, it's also an example of incredibly lazy and dishonest reporting. Zeller interviews Kathy Dopp of ustogether.org, a blogger who has been covering the story. Her hits jumped from 50/day to 70,000 when her findings were mentioned at dKos and FreePress.org. Ms. Dopp is his primary source for blogging hysteria. He mentions BlackBoxVoting, but doesn't talk to Bev Harris, who has been on this story for years. He doesn't mention Greg Palast's volumes of work on the subject at all or Keith Olbermann's show on MSNBC (hardly a source of lefty conspiracy theories) that took a look at the inconsistencies on Election Day. (video here) There is nothing about John Conyers, who made a request to the GAO to look into the reports of fraud.

Instead of a follow-up on the issues people have with electronic voting and what they're doing about expressing those concerns (beyond typing away at our silly hysterical blogs) or a responsible piece that looks at the proven vulnerabilities of our unauditable elections process, the NYT, through Zeller, chose instead to make the story a question of proving that the election was stolen. That question is, of course, impossible to answer because in crucial counties the vote is unauditable.

The NYT runs a sidebar of maps that show that in 2000, some counties in Florida went for Dole even though more Dems were registered. For the people who rightly understand that 2000 Florida wasn't exactly the gold standard in electoral rectitude they throw a map from 1996 at us, which shows some of the same thing but in smaller numbers. At this point people uninformed about the issue probably will start to get a headache and flip to the sports section. People interested in election fraud though, including most of the blogs covering this issue, have realized that maps like Zeller's are only good as far as they raise questions for investigation. And here again is the point that Zeller wants to ignore: we can't investigate unauditable machines. Zeller uses the maps to distract from that central and irrefuatable fact and then to close the door on inquiry.

But wait, there's more. At the bottom of the jump page, there's a story by our old friend John Schwartz, who has been muddying the water on the issue of eVoting for over a year at the NYT. That isn't to say that Mr. Schwartz has never done good work on the subject; it is to say that when he does, I'm always surprised.

Today I wasn't surprised. We got a classic "the voting machines didn't explode so they must be fine" story - the kind I've been collecting here for nearly a year. The Schwartz piece is a perfect exclamation point for the Zeller confuse-a-thon. There's Zeller above the fold saying that hysterical blogger troublemakers are failing to gin up controversy that doesn't exist and below the fold there's Schwartz meekly offering proof that everything went find on Election Day despite some minor glitches.

Once again boys - read this carefully - we don't know how the unauditable machines performed on Election Day. By design we will never know how unauditable machines perform. There are maps and exit polls that should raise important questions about touch screen and op-scan machines. We don't need the NYT to tell us to stop asking them and mocking us when we do. We need the NYT to lead the fight, to, as the Society of Professional Journalists says, seek truth and report it. Thank God for Blogistan.

Note to Elisabeth Bumiller: Nothing about either of these important and badly botched stories qualifies as "really good journalism." They may have earned your paper lots of Ketchum Points, but they don't do anything to restore the shredded reputation the NYT seems intent on continuing to destroy as it limps into 2005.

Comments

[shari]

It really makes sense to me that if you sully the reputation of blogs in general, then we will have less power/influence/what have you to counter corporate media.

Sidenote: It's also pathetic that on many 'top' blogs, wonkette is on but not another more serious female blogger on the sidebar.

[eRobin]

You're so right - that's what Ed Gillespie and the rest of the Right are going to work harder on over the next four years I'm sure. I just posted about it after I read that he wants to END EXIT POLLING!!! Part of his explanation involved the inherent sleaziness of the internets:

Mr. Gillespie conceded that the exit polls weren't reported directly by major news organization themselves. "But with the Internet today, we're kidding ourselves, aren't we, to think that everybody in America doesn't know what the exit data is showing?" he said.

I feel like I'm drowning.

I'm with you on Wonkette too. She's the only representative of female bloggers on way too many lists. Of course, those lists usually embarass themselves by their other choices as well. Did you see the WaPo's best poli-blog list?

[Steve Bates]

That story by Zeller was appalling. My sense was that he was sent out with a mission to "take down," not so much the blogs, but the whole story of electoral malfunction, of all sorts. Apparently the thinking goes that if people's minds can be set at ease about the voting systems themselves (and they certainly should not be), those same people will also comfortably ignore the scrubbing of voter rolls, the three-hour to nine-hour waiting lines, the partisan challenges to individual voters at the polls, etc.

But hey, thank goodness we have Zeller on the job, to put us bloggers in our place, and to reassure the electorate (apologies, Bobby McFerrin), "don't worry; be happy." That's a good thing, right? right???