Associated Press
When it comes to the political system and democratic process, one of the most important stories of the year is the wave of voter-suppression tactics imposed by Republican policymakers across the country. The most pernicious and hard-to-defend trend is the spate of voter-ID laws, creating a new and unnecessary burden on voters.
The New York Times ran a story on this last week, noting what "both sides" have argued. Republicans, of course, said the laws are necessary to combat fraud, while Democrats insisted this thinly-veiled disenfranchisement scheme is an unsubtle ploy to rig the elections in the GOP's favor by disproportionately affecting traditional Democratic constituencies.
The Times' piece did not, however, get around to mentioning the only critical detail surrounding the entire controversy: the fact that documented instances of in-person voter fraud are extraordinarily rare. You are, quite literally, far more likely to get struck by lightning than find a legitimate example of fraud that would have been prevented by voter-ID.
So, why in the world did the paper of record publish a fairly long article on the subject without telling readers the most important fact of the larger debate? Margaret Sullivan, the Times' public editor, asked those involved with the piece.
"There's a lot of reasonable disagreement on both sides," [Times national editor, Sam Sifton] said. One side says there's not significant voter fraud; the other side says there's not significant voter suppression. "It's not our job to litigate it in the paper," Mr. Sifton said. "We need to state what each side says."
[Ethan Bronner, who wrote the article] agreed. "Both sides have become very angry and very suspicious about the other," he said. "The purpose of this story was to step back and look at both sides, to lay it out." While he agreed that there was "no known evidence of in-person voter fraud," and that could have been included in this story, "I don't think that's the core issue here."
That sound you hear is me banging my head against my desk.
Look, he-said/she-said reporting is routine, and I realize good reporters are often cautious about taking sides. But there's an objective truth in a story like this, and there's nothing wrong with media professionals providing that truth to the public. Reality does not actually have a liberal bias, and there's no reason for the Times to pass along competing arguments while encouraging its readers to go elsewhere to discover which argument is accurate.
Kevin Drum had a good sharp piece on this over the weekend.
I don't have a problem with giving both sides some air time, but by far the main focus of the voter access battle is stringent photo ID laws -- and the only real justification for stringent photo ID laws is that it stops in-person voter fraud. (That is, the kind of fraud where people show up in person at a polling place and pretend to be someone they aren't. Even in theory, photo ID laws can't stop any other kind of fraud.) This means that the existence of in-person voter fraud is exactly the core issue. If you don't address the truth of that claim, you simply haven't done a good job of informing your readership.
And apparently Bonner knows this. He agrees that there's no known evidence of in-person voter fraud. So why on earth would he not make that clear in a story about voter ID laws? This wouldn't require him to take a stand on the laws themselves, only to point out to readers in his own voice that in-person voter fraud basically doesn't exist. They can then draw their own conclusions about whether voter ID laws are a good idea anyway and what the motivation for them is.
When critical details about pressing policy matters are deliberately omitted from news articles, all because of a fear of criticism from the right, then reporting on voting rights has gone badly off the rails. It's really not complicated.
(1) Republicans claim to fear voter fraud.
(2) To address the threat of fraud, they're creating new voting restrictions -- which could disenfranchise millions of eligible American voters -- which just do happen to affect Democrats.
(3) There's no actual fraud, and the policy is, an objective matter, a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
By what reasoning are points (1) and (2) relevant, but (3) is not?
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"We need to state what each side says."
In other words "F*ck truth!"
In my words "F*ck the NY Times, lead cheerleader for Little George's Iraq invasion!"
As someone else indicated earlier, the MSM is obsessed with being neutral when they should be objective.
Voter "fraud" = pulling the D lever.
End of discussion.
This is again related to a report issued by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance has an important comment related to American Democracy as suppressing ethnic minorities from participating in the full democratic process. As i noted in another comment for America to be the bastion of democracy is difficult when you have such Institutes who have moral integrity Kofi Annan is the Institutes head. America`s democratic process is being compared to Costa Rica kenya, Nigeria and the former states of the Warsaw Bloc. America get your act together stop this stupidity and show what is pure and utter jerrymandering
And they wonder every time they call why I won't subsribe. Do their job and I might.
There are two sides to a painting. One has the paint that the artist applied to create the painting and the other is just the blank canvas. I don't hear the art critics having to mention both sides equally when they describe the painting. "Oh The Scream. You should see the back of the canvas."
At the end of the day it's all about money, not journalism I guess.
Yes, it does.
Here's where you can tell Ethan Bronner, fake-balance, false-equivalence Cowboy rodeo winner, what you think of him:
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/ethan_bronner/index.html
As you can guess, I'm not nice. And I urge you not to be nice, either.
The NY Times has a history of doing some very good journalism and some not so good on really important issues. I would remind everyone of Judith Miller and her completely uncritical take on the Bush administration's insistence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. She swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
Bronner seems to have a similar lack of judgment. Odd since several Republican politicians have made it quite clear that voter ID laws are about voter suppression. I suppose, if he were writing about global warming and the fight over whether to combat it or not, he would say that whether global warming exists is beside the point.
The thing that kills me about this ongoing fight with the MSM and, in particular editors, is the fact that I have never once, not once, heard of one of them saying "you know, there's something to what you're saying. In hindsight, we should have done better."
Instead, they reflexively--and I use the word decidedly--fall back on the same frame they've been using since the first blogs appeared and started making fun of them since the 1990s: "well, I totally reject that because what's really upsetting those people is that we're not biased."
Wonder why Americans are getting dumber every year, watch and read the Main Stream Media and you are guaranteed to be more misinformed than when you started.
We see this argument played out over and over. I don't think a journalists job is to give me someone elses opinions on issues, that's just lazy. A journalist should provide the framework (ok, facts) so that I can form my opinion.
The right doesn't really like to deal with facts because in the words of Stephen Colbert "the truth leans a little bit left"
Interesting fact: Times national editor, Sam Sifton (who is cited in the public editor's response) is theologian Reinhold Niebuhr's grandson.
I am a resident of Pennsylvania, not Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, but the political gray area in-between. In Pennsylvania the cost of a state issued identification card is $13.50 (according to PennDOT's website.) While to many Americans this doesn't seem like a significant amount, you ought to factor the cost of transportation to a PennDOT facility and the possibility of having to take time off from work to make it to a facility during operating hours. In some less densely populated areas of our state, like Berwick in Columbia, are only open one day a week. In our larger cities like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Harrisburg, the facilities are open six days a week with reasonable hours.
The simple fact that we must pay for these ID's, in my view, makes them a violation of the Twenty-fourth Amendment. And while the wording of the Twenty-fourth Amendment may not precisely include the subject of photo identification, Voter ID laws essentially require us to pay to vote. In 1962-4 the use of photo identification was not a common practice. Pennsylvania has only required photo identification since the 1980's, so the issue would not have existed in the sixties. Regardless of the precise terminology, the requirement of a state issued ID, is a tax on my right to vote. While I have possessed photo ID since I was fifteen years old getting my first job, there are a great number of my fellow Pennsylvanians that do not have the resources to purchase an ID let alone transport themselves to the appropriate facilities.
The Republicans would have the uninformed masses believe that hordes of people show up to polling stations every election and drastically effect the outcome. When in fact the 2008 election had 0.0004% rate of reported voter fraud instinces. THe truth is that voter fraud is incredibly rare, and with the risk of a $10,000 fine and five
* years in prison the consequences out weight the additiion of one more vote.
I am a resident of Pennsylvania, not Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, but the political gray area in-between. In Pennsylvania the cost of a state issued identification card is $13.50 (according to PennDOT's website.) While to many Americans this doesn't seem like a significant amount, you ought to factor the cost of transportation to a PennDOT facility and the possibility of having to take time off from work to make it to a facility during operating hours. In some less densely populated areas of our state, like Berwick in Columbia, are only open one day a week. In our larger cities like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Harrisburg, the facilities are open six days a week with reasonable hours.
The simple fact that we must pay for these ID's, in my view, makes them a violation of the Twenty-fourth Amendment. And while the wording of the Twenty-fourth Amendment may not precisely include the subject of photo identification, Voter ID laws essentially require us to pay to vote. In 1962-4 the use of photo identification was not a common practice. Pennsylvania has only required photo identification since the 1980's, so the issue would not have existed in the sixties. Regardless of the precise terminology, the requirement of a state issued ID, is a tax on my right to vote. While I have possessed photo ID since I was fifteen years old getting my first job, there are a great number of my fellow Pennsylvanians that do not have the resources to purchase an ID let alone transport themselves to the appropriate facilities.
The Republicans would have the uninformed masses believe that hordes of people show up to polling stations every election and drastically effect the outcome. When in fact the 2008 election had 0.0004% rate of reported voter fraud instinces. THe truth is that voter fraud is incredibly rare, and with the risk of a $10,000 fine and five years in prison the consequences out weight the additiion of one more vote.