Authentic Journalism Hasn't Arrived in the United States

Today is Thursday, January 6, the day of the certification of the electors, and after this (part-time) reporter got home from his paying job he sought some true news about the challenge to this in Congress and the protests on the streets.  Where to look but the internet?  After trying truthout.org, guerillanews.com, and commondreams.org, I was forced to go to cnn.com to find the bury-the-news headline "Bush carries Electoral College after delay" and the nearly information-free story that followed it.

That CNN story proves the need for a network of authentic journalism that can at least report honestly on public events. CNN's Ted Barrett and unnamed others wrote:

Alleging widespread "irregularities" on Election Day, a group of Democrats in Congress objected earlier Thursday to the counting of Ohio's 20 electoral votes.

The challenge was defeated 267-31 by the House and 74-1 by the Senate, clearing the way for the joint session to count the votes from the remaining states.

The move was not designed to overturn Bush's re-election, said Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones and California Sen. Barbara Boxer, who filed the objection.

The objecting Democrats, all of whom are House members except Boxer, said they wanted to draw attention to the need for aggressive election reform in the wake of what they said were widespread voter problems.

In a letter to congressional leaders Wednesday, members of the group said they would take the action because a new report by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee found "numerous, serious election irregularities," particularly in Ohio, that led to "a significant disenfranchisement of voters."

"How can we possibly tell millions of Americans who registered to vote, who came to the polls in record numbers, particularly our young people ... to simply get over it and move on?" Tubbs Jones said at a press conference with Boxer.

Quotes around irregularities (three hour lines aren't an irregularity?) and no independent investigation, just quote the politician and move on.  Nowhere does it mention that the challenging members of Congress tend to be Black.  Perhaps the CNN writers have a point, disenfranchising black voters may be widespread "regularities" more than "irregularities."  But don't worry, we're not even at the worst of it yet.

Republicans dismissed the effort as a stunt, noting that specific allegations of voting problems in Ohio have been investigated by journalists and, the Republicans said, found to be untrue.

Since Republicans are citing journalists collectively as a source, do you think maybe Ted Barrett and CNN could check with themselves on this one?  Did they or any journalist really investigate the allegations of voter disenfranchisement?  Considering the report from the House Judiciary Democrats only came out yesterday, if they had investigated all the evidence in that damning report, they might remember it well enough to either confirm or deny Republican claims.  Or if they had investigated anything in the past two months, for that matter, they might be able to tell us if those dismissive Republicans were being perfectly accurate or not.

(This reporter had forgotten to check BuzzFlash.com, which linked to a Reuters article which was less bad.  It, at least, briefly mentioned the street demonstrations in Washington D.C., reporting about 200 protesters but like CNN quoted politicos without trying to verify facts.

Four years after the Bush regime grabbed power, half the U.S. population knew they had stolen the election.  Will half that ever come to understand what happened in Ohio?

Authentic journalism in the U.S. isn't in all the places and times it should (or it's hard to find) but it must.

It's nowhere near enough to retake and remake this once sort of democratic country into a real democracy, of by and for its people, and maybe even a force for good in the world, but smashing this imposed ignorance is the only beginning.