FWD: wag the dog

[StepCher@aol.com]

 U.S. media forget about dimpled chads



 By JOHN IBBITSON


 Thursday, October 11, 2001 ? Print Edition, Page A1


 WASHINGTON -- Just weeks ago, it would have been the biggest

 story in the land: A final, comprehensive audit would reveal

 whether Al Gore or George W. Bush should be president. Today,

 it seems to be nobody's news.


 A consortium of major U.S. news organizations has decided

 unanimously not to analyze and report the results of the

 $1-million (U.S.) audit they commissioned to identify which

 presidential candidate received the most votes in Florida in last

 November's election.


 By "spiking" the story, they have raised questions about

 whether the country's biggest media conglomerates are

 suppressing news that potentially could tarnish the image of Mr.

 Bush in the midst of the President's war on terrorism.


 "I find it truly extraordinary that they have made this decision,"

 said Jane Kirtley, media ethics specialist at the University of

 Minnesota. "I am so chilled by what is going on."


 The Supreme Court, in ordering an end to the recounting of

 votes in Florida last December, effectively handed the presidency

 to Mr. Bush. But there was evidence that, had accidentally

 mismarked ballots such as the famous "dimpled chads" been

 properly scrutinized, Mr. Gore might have won the state and the

 presidency.


 Last January, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The

 Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Newsweek, CNN and

 several other news organizations banded together and

 commissioned the University of Chicago's National Opinion

 Research Center to conduct a comprehensive examination of the

 ballots not officially counted in the Florida result.

 The centre was charged with examining each of about 180,000

 uncounted ballots, reporting on which marks are on each ballot.


 The survey was completed around the end of August, Julie

 Antelman, a spokeswoman for the centre, said. Reporters and

 editors from each member of the consortium were then to review

 the survey and attempt to discern how each voter had intended

 to vote, and who, on that basis, won Florida.


 But shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center

 and the Pentagon, the consortium unanimously agreed not to

 proceed with the analysis.


 To choose deliberately not to report major news is a remarkable

 decision for them to take. But they say the decision was taken

 because of a lack of resources and that the war on terrorism has

 made the story irrelevant.


 "Right now, we don't have the time, the personnel or the space

 in the newspaper to focus on this," Catherine Mathis,

 vice-president of corporate communications at the New York

 Times Co., said in an interview. "There's a much bigger story

 right now."


 Work on the Florida recount, she said, has been "postponed

 indefinitely."


 "Our belief is that the priorities of the country have changed, and

 our priorities have changed, and we need to marshal our

 person-power and our financial resources to cover the events of

 Sept. 11 and its aftermath," said Steven Goldstein,

 vice-president of corporate communications for Dow Jones & Co.,

 which publishes The Wall Street Journal. "When times have

 settled down, I'm sure all of this will come out. But not in the

 next few weeks."


 There have been previous efforts to examine rejected Florida

 ballots in an attempt to divine the intent of the voters who cast

 them, including a survey by The Miami Herald that suggested Mr.

 Bush indeed won the state.


 But the study commissioned by the news consortium was by far

 the most detailed and objective. Because antiquated voting

 machines were used in Florida and the punch-card ballots were

 complicated, many votes were marked as spoiled when a

 machine failed to punch cleanly the ballot's chad -- the bit of

 paper to be punched out.


 To help divine voter intent, each of 180,000 uncounted ballots

 was examined by a three-person panel, and its marking

 described. Was the chad "dimpled," (bulging, but intact)?

 Hanging by one or three corners? Could light be seen through

 the intended hole?


 The results were tabulated in a set of tables. "The National

 Opinion Research Center has completed its part of the task," Ms.

 Antelman said. "What remains is for the media group to request

 the data set."


 Neither the centre nor the consortium knows whether the data

 suggest that, had the uncounted votes been tallied, Mr. Gore or

 Mr. Bush would have won the state. Mr. Goldstein rejected the

 suggestion that the media might be avoiding the story for fear of

 embarrassing the President in a time of national crisis.


 "It has absolutely nothing to do with that whatsoever," he said.

 "The priorities have changed. People are focused on the fact that

 we're at war."


 But "to say it is not a story any more is an utterly ingenuous

 thing to say," Prof. Kirtley said. "Of course it's still a story,

 whatever are the results of that audit.


 "They should just do it."



       Copyright =A9 2001 Globe Interactive, a division of Bell Globemedia

                                          Publishing Inc.