Monkeywrenching the political process

[unixronin]

With the popular vote in the just-past election so close, one could be forgiven for wondering how much the election may have been influenced by what amounts to an elaborate practical joke.

Of course, the article points out that the perpetrators observed that the news media could easily have exposed their hoax had they put the least effort into checking their facts.  But in this last election, by all appearances the media didn't WANT to check their facts, as long as the report involved something damaging to the McCain-Palin campaign.  Can you imagine the witch-hunt had Eitan Gorlin and Dan Mirvish chosen Barack Obama as their target?  Ah, but wait, we don't have to imagine — we have the persecution of Joe the Plumber as an example.

When I consider how one-sided the reporting of this past election campaign was, and yet how close the popular vote was, I find it hard to avoid speculating that in this Presidential election, the people of the United States did not elect Barack Obama; the news media did.

Comments

[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

You wouldn't have to, since our press was, rightly, all over those.

They didn't want to believe them, so they dug (often this wasn't even much work...) to find out what was going on. The 'B' was debunked before the story even got going. Heck, half the places I saw it mentioned reported from the get go as as 'but it seems pretty iffy if it's even true.' Less than 24 hours later, it was confirmed as a hoax and widely reported as such.