1. The first major problem comes right off the bat, in the first two paragraphs. According to the Post, there's a "story" here because...wait for it...Republicans are flinging out ridiculous, over-the-top, desperate accusations against Democrats with 12 days to go until Election Day. There's no proof of anything here, just Republicans wild accusations that Gov. Kaine is "stacking the registration rolls with felons." In fact, these aren't "felons," these are EX-felons who have served their time and paid their debt to society. This year, Tim Kaine has restored the voting rights of 1,484 EX-felons. As even the Post manages to point out:
Almost all of the people who had their rights restored by Kaine this year are nonviolent offenders who have not committed a new offense within the past three years. Kaine's predecessor, Mark R. Warner (D), restored the rights of about 3,500 nonviolent offenders.
Again, what's the story here, aside from Republicans raising this as an "issue" 12 days out from an election? Right, there is none. So why's this in the Washington Post?
2. The third paragraph epitomizes everything wrong with "objective" journalism as practiced by the corporate media nowadays.
The GOP effort mirrors the acrimony nationwide about efforts by outside groups and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's campaign to increase voter participation.
Excuse me, but the only reason there's "acrimony nationwide about efforts by outside groups and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's campaign to increase voter participation" is because, once again, the Republicans are creating the acrimony. In fact, this is a complete non-issue, except insofar as the Republicans themselves are trying to smear people for the sin of registering people to vote in America. The whole false "controversy" over ACORN, which has been doing great work in registering voters and has NOT - repeat NOT - engaged in any "vote fraud," is irresponsibly being perpetuated here by Washington Post reporters who have willfully suspended their own responsibility to do CRITICAL ANALYSIS, to evaluate sources, to weigh whether they are being "spun" or not, and to proceed accordingly. In this case, they have completely flunked the most basic lessons of Journalism 101. It's truly pathetic to see at this once-great newspaper.
3. The entire concept that there's something wrong with allowing EX-felons to vote is utterly absurd. In fact, according to this information/a> and also this article:
*2 states - Maine and Vermont - actually allow felons to vote from prison.
*13 states and Washington, D.C., allow felons to vote when they are on probation or parole.
*20 states restore felons' voting rights after they've completed their sentences.
*8 states - Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Mississippi, Nevada, Tennessee, Wyoming - permit some people with felony convictions to vote.
*Only 2 states - Virginia and Kentucky - "permanently bar felons from voting."
That's right, Virginia is only 1 of 2 states in the entire country that "permanently bar felons from voting," although even in Virginia, the governor has the power to restore those rights if he or she deems it appropriate. In fact, it's outrageous that Virginia, along with only one other state in America, does NOT restore the voting rights of people, particularly non-violent offenders, once they have served their time and paid their debt to society.
4. Since John McCain's allies are throwing out wild accusations, perhaps the Washington Post might have taken a minute to mention that one of McCain's closest allies, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R), "pushed through a change to that state's practice of denying former felons the right to vote, serve on juries and obtain state-issued licenses." That's right, when John McCain's close ally, Charlie Crist, took office as governor of Florida in early 2007, "Florida was one of three states (including Kentucky and Virginia) that did not automatically restore an ex-felon's voting rights." Crist changed that, leaving Kentucky and Virginia as the odd states out on this issue, with 48 other following far more enlightened policies here in the 21st century. Now, I know this will come as a complete shocker, but this situation isn't harsh enough for Virginia Republicans. Apparently, they'd like Virginia to be the least progressive state in the country on this issue, as on so many issues. Getting back to the Washington Post article, though, someone please explain to me why this is "news" exactly?
5. In general, this article represents the utter deterioration of "objective journalism" in the profit-driven, corporate-controlled, infotainment, idiot media. To these people, being "objective" doesn't mean there's an actual, objective reality out there. Instead, it means you present both "sides" of an issue, even if one (e.g., the climate change deniers, largely funded by the fossil fuel industry) is complete bulls***, while the other (e.g., the 99% of scientists who believe that man is causing global warming) is the demonstrably factual reality. This is not journalism, it's a parody of journalism. As is this "news" article in the Washington Post this morning.
And they wonder why only 10% of Americans have "a great deal" of confidence in newspapers, while 28% have either "none" or "very little?" Hmmmmm.
BTW, I think it's abominable to not allow felons that have served their sentences to vote. It further marginalizes them and tells them that they are less equal than the rest of society. It seems like it's an equal protection problem to me, as well, but I guess that hasn't been probed in the courts (and I wouldn't expect the current SCOTUS to rule favorably in that regard).
One more point: the Post's reporting has been pro-corporate, pro-Tom Davis, pro-Frank Wolf for years. I particularly despise their "on the one hand, on the other hand" absurdity with regard to issues like global warming, and I think most environmentalists would agree.
In the case of this particular story, I think it's worth linking to it and letting readers decide for themselves.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
I agree with you Lowell that the fact this story got covered is the result of the GOP pushing the story. The substance of the GOP charges are also tenuous -- we're talking about a few dozen recidivists who have committed misdemeanors. That's what the GOP is focusing on. Then there's the issue of a few hundred absentee ballots in a county that will cast several hundred thousand votes this election cycle.
I think the reporters did a decent job of reporting the facts. Most of the issues that you've outlined above are included in the article (e.g. the fact that Kentucky and Virginia are the only states that have restrictions, the total number of voters involved).
The charges by the GOP are also over-the-top, and in the context of the article that's how they came across to me. The GOP guy talks about "desperation and dishonesty," but the GOP operative is raising the white flag over an issue that doesn't even register on the margins. It's a desperate line of attack 12 days before the election and that sense came across in the article.
In terms of the placement of the story too, a front page metro section location sounds right.
A new study has found that when it comes to U.S. media coverage of global warming, superficial balance-telling "both" sides of the story-can actually be a form of informational bias. Despite the consistent assertions of the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that human activities have had a "discernible" influence on the global climate and that global warming is a serious problem that must be addressed immediately, "he said/she said" reporting has allowed a small group of global warming skeptics to have their views greatly amplified.[...]
Using the search term "global warming," we collected articles from this time period and focused on what is considered "hard news," excluding editorials, opinion columns, letters to the editor and book reviews. Approximately 41 percent of articles came from the New York Times , 29 percent from the Washington Post , 25 percent from the Los Angeles Times , and 5 percent from the Wall Street Journal .
From a total of 3,543 articles, we examined a random sample of 636 articles. Our results showed that the majority of these stories were, in fact, structured on the journalistic norm of balanced reporting, giving the impression that the scientific community was embroiled in a rip-roaring debate on whether or not humans were contributing to global warming.
More specifically, we discovered that:
53 percent of the articles gave roughly equal attention to the views that humans contribute to global warming and that climate change is exclusively the result of natural fluctuations.
35 percent emphasized the role of humans while presenting both sides of the debate, which more accurately reflects scientific thinking about global warming.
6 percent emphasized doubts about the claim that human-caused global warming exists, while another 6 percent only included the predominant scientific view that humans are contributing to Earth's temperature increases.
Through statistical analyses, we found that coverage significantly diverged from the IPCC consensus on human contributions to global warming from 1990 through 2002. In other words, through adherence to the norm of balance, the U.S. press systematically proliferated an informational bias.
Also, see here:
In the premiere broadcast, Mother Jones Radio exposes junk scientists and pseudo-journalists who say global warming is a hoax - and who get millions of dollars from ExxonMobil. Investigative journalist Ross Gelbspan discusses why mainstream media coverage of global warming has failed. Chris Mooney, author of "The Republican War on Science," tells us how ExxonMobil is one of the last - and loudest - holdouts in the campaign to deny the dangers of global warming...
Just one more example (you could literally spend all day doing this) of how idiotic the media is when it comes to science, energy and environment:
In a blog post, ABC News' Jake Tapper wrote: "In a long, and interesting speech, [Bill Clinton] characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: 'We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.' " But Clinton did not say that is what has to be done to combat global warming.
I can also say definitively that, when I was with the Energy Information Administration, I saw time and time again, pretty much every day, stories in the news media on international energy and energy-related environmental issues - which is what I covered - that were flat out wrong or skewed in some way. Part of the reason is that most journalists are generalists and have NO CLUE what they're talking about on these complex subjects. Another part of the reason is their bizarre concept of "objective" journalism, which they take to mean "presenting both sides" of an argument, even if there aren't two equal sides (in the case of global warming, there's one side with 99.9% of the evidence, the other with 0.1% to be generous). That's not "journalism," it's laziness or worse (e.g., pressure from corporate masters).
The troubling aspect of Lowell's argument is that in attacking "he said/she said" reporting as confusing the issue and obscuring the "truth" (my word, not Lowell's, but certainly the word that captures the spirit of Lowell's critique), Lowell is close to adopting a Platonic distain of the average person's ability to sort through competing ideas to find the "truth." It is also akin to the Marx-Engel notion that socio-economic "truth" cannot be dervived from the so-called "objectivity" of the "bourgeois" press. I'd much prefer to rely on our abilities to reach the "truth" based upon the "he said/she said" form of journalism, than to rely upon the truth as seen by some Praetorian Guard--even if it takes a bit longer to reach a democratic consensus.