| Major Media Suppress Recount Study of Florida VoteBy Barry Grey, World Socialist/25 September 2001Via Agitprop News A consortium of major American news organizations, including theNew York Times, the Washington Post, and the WallStreet Journal, has decided to withhold the results of its recountof ballots cast in Florida in the 2000 presidential election. Theconsortium had planned to publish its report this week, and althoughits decision to suppress its own findings has received virtually nomedia attention, the reason is made clear in a September 23 column byNew York Times Washington bureau chief Richard L. Berke. In a column that enthusiastically welcomes the dissolution of allpolitical opposition in Washington in the wake of the September 11terror attacks, Berke writes: “Until September 11, the capital wasriding a historically partisan period, with leading Democrats stillportraying their president as `appointed’ by the Supreme Court. In amove that might have stoked the partisan tensions—but now seemsutterly irrelevant—a consortium of news organizations, includingThe New York Times, had been scheduled this week to release theresults of its ambitious undertaking to recount the Floridapresidential ballots. (That has been put on hold indefinitely).” The Times and its counterparts in the consortium have decidedto conceal from the American people facts damaging to the Bushadministration’s claims to political legitimacy. They are doing so forthe express purpose of suppressing dissent and bolstering thepresident as he takes the American people into war and makes sweepingattacks on their civil liberties. |
