Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Death of a Thousand Cuts

huffingtonpost.com

Death of a Thousand Cuts
Brad Friedman

Death of a thousand cuts... That's what seems to be in store either for American democracy, or for what is required to finally bring down the entire anti-democratic Electronic Voting cabal in this country, as aided and abetted in their crimes against American Democratic Values by the Corporate Mainstream Media.

We take heart that there is more and more coverage of these matters these days, even if there is more and more unfortunate reasons to have such coverage in the first place.

VotersUnite.org's "Daily Voting News", now posted each day on The BRAD BLOG, gives one some sense of how much is going on -- both good and bad -- in regards to Election-related issues in this country, and just how much of it does make it into the news somewhere, if only (and too often) on just the local level.

At least the public's and the media's awareness continues to grow -- slowly, but surely -- even as the incidents of democracy in disrepair increase exponentially along with that awareness (and along with the obsene outpouring of virtually unchecked HAVA money to States and Counties in the bargain).

Nonetheless, we always look for reasons to be optimistic, and our usual coterie of Election Reform Media All-Stars continues to both grow and produce stellar work. In addition to the recent Free Press exposé by Fitrakis and Wasserman on the inexplicable in Ohio's election last week, which we mentioned previously at BRAD BLOG (as well as at HuffPo), there are a few other notable heroic voices of late that you should know about it.

Debra LoGuercio, the editor of the Winters Express and syndicated columnist for a number of smaller West Coast papers, continues to take both her democracy and role of media watchdog seriously. Her latest column this week, "Where in the World is Democracy?" picks up on my previous calls (both at BRAD BLOG and later at HuffPo) for Mainstream Corporate Media coverage -- hell, even a single sentence would do! -- of the recent landmark report from the non-partisan Governmental Accountability Office (GAO). That report, which confirms so many of the problems with Electronic Voting that we've been reporting on here for more than a year, is apparently less important to the corporate media braintrust, according to LoGuercio, than figuring out where in the world Matt Lauer is.


We're happy as well to welcome one Kathy Gill into the still-all-too-exclusive club of journalists who give a damn about democracy. She's posted an article on that GAO report yesterday at About.com. Welcome to the small, but still-growing club, Kathy! Glad you're on board and please keep up the good -- and important -- work!

And as Election Day unravelled last week, our friend Robert Koehler of Tribune Media Services once again opines on the MIA MSM in regard to Election Fraud in America's once-great democracy in his latest piece, "A Crime Without a Name - 'Concern' about election fraud is useless without guts and anger". He speaks, amongst other things, about John Kerry's failure to stand up for what is right here, and the unwillingness of the mainstream media to investigate and report without that kick in the pants.

The always sharp Dave Astor of Editor & Publisher has added some visibility by picking up on Bob's column in a quick article about it yesterday. For this, we are pleased, since so many of Bob's Tribune Media clients have shown neither the guts nor anger required to save our democracy, and have chosen instead to avoid running many of his important articles on Election Reform issues all together. It'll be interesting as usual, to see how many of them don't pick up Koehler's latest, despite -- once again -- the elegant way in which he is able to express the nightmare of our crumbling democracy.

To paraphrase a famous movie tagline; In the corporate-conglomerated media world of the 21st century no one can hear you scream. But some have heard, and continue to yell even louder...And we'll keep at the rest of them until they realize what's at stake...no matter how many cuts it takes.