Not really. But it’s a damned funny headline. And it’s probably accurate “enough” for the New York Times, where accuracy doesn’t much matter anymore, apparently.
We’ll have some of our own thoughts very soon on Recount, which we much enjoyed over the holiday weekend. Until then, our preview of the new HBO film, filed before we finally got to see it when in premiered Sunday night, is posted here.
But it’s worth noting, for the moment, that the New York Times, the disgraced “Paper of Record,” even today persists in misreporting the story of the 2000 Florida Election debacle. As Larry Beinhart documents today at Smirking Chimp:
“In 2001 painstaking postmortems of the Florida count, one by The New York Times and another by a consortium of newspapers, concluded that Mr. Bush would have come out slightly ahead, even if all the votes counted throughout the state had been retallied.“
— Alessandra Stanley, New York Times, May 23, 2008 in a review of the HBO television movie, Recount
That’s not true.
The New York Times did not do its own recount. It did participate in a consortium. Here’s what they actually said:
“If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards, and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won, by a very narrow margin.“
— Ford Fessenden And John M. Broder, New York Times, November 12, 2001
Why did Ms. Stanley make such an important and fundamental error?
It is not a trivial matter. It is a common piece of misinformation. Many, many people believe it. Now a few more do, as a result of Ms. Stanley’s review.
It is not a trivial matter. Because that misinformation was created by one of the most bizarre, and still completely unexplained, journalistic events in modern times.
Here’s what happened.
Read Beinhart’s piece for the remarkable details in what really is one of the “most bizarre, and still completely unexplained, journalist events in modern times.” Unfortunately, he doesn’t include links in his coverage (please add them if you can, Larry!), but for the doubters, here’s the report [PDF] showing that Al Gore did, in fact, receive more votes in Florida in 2000 than George W. Bush. That, despite the stunningly contrary headlines, as Beinhart shows, from almost every paper that reported on that complete state count. Even the papers who bothered to report — if you read them closely enough — that Gore received more votes than Bush, still used inexplicably misleading headlines for the story.
Given the wholly inaccurate claim, as includied in their review of Recount, it would appear that NYTimes is intent on simply ensuring the matter is inaccurately reported forever. We’ll remember to keep that, and their year-long front page pre-Iraq War-mongering, in mind next time we’re inevitably told by some wingnut on the radio, just how “liberal” the NYTimes is.
Also, it’s with no small amount of sadness that we note the passing of legendary producer/director/actor Sydney Pollack who died on Monday at the age of 73.
Pollack had been slated to direct Recount originally, but was forced to bow out due to being diagnosed with cancer last August. He lived, at least, long enough to see Recount premiered on Sunday night on HBO. He had stayed on with the production as Executive Producer.
Given his great sense of humor, we’d like to believe he would well have appreciated the satirical headline above.
Of course it makes sense for the NY Times to misreport this important election issue. Just remember the metal tubes and the drum beat to war. The Times has been marching steadily from real jouralism to Fox quality.
Are you trying to give me a heart attack?
Rush “Ministry of Propaganda” Limbaugh on the movie “Recount”:
RUSH: I have been advocating this as part of Operation Chaos. You know, I watched this movie, this Recount movie, and it was told from the Democrat perspective (as they admitted that it was), but it was a documentary, and it was just fraught full of holes. There were facts left out. There was dialogue made up (things that people never said that they were quoted as saying), but unless you knew all the details you might not be able to figure this out. This thing got it so wrong. The premise is wrong in the first place because the media — the USA Today bunch, CNN, and the New York Times — all went down to Florida after all of this aftermath was over. They looked at all the evidence, they counted votes every which way you can think of, and in no count did Algore ever lead in Florida! He would not have won Florida with a statewide recount, with a full recount in Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, and Broward Counties, Volusia County.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/hom...115.guest.html
One thing that worries me, is that Karl Rove get prosecuted and charged too soon, and be pardoned by the President, on the other hand his presence and continued access to government in general presents a threat that yet another election is stolen.
Jason Leopold is on Peter B right now. Linking Rove with Thor Hearn and picking and choosing Judges. Wonderful stuff.
Damn Jason’s off the air now.
More info at
http://pubrecord.org/index.php?...&Itemid=8
Sorry about that
The movie missed a good chance to just lay out the fact that Gore won either at the first or last of the movie, but I really enjoyed it!
The events and actors looked very much like the real thing. They almost didn’t need captions. Especially Katherine Harris and James Baker. A spot-on performance!
The title of this post almost had me out of my chair running for the streets, but It’s a good thing I read on.
It does look like the article excerpted above is indeed inaccurate.
But isn’t the summary still a bit misleading? I always thought the reality was this:
If the recount *as Gore had requested it to proceed” had proceeded, Bush would have ended up slightly ahead.
If the recount had instead proceeded using any of the actual sane standards, Gore would have ended up ahead.
So, I can’t really blame the newspapers for phrasing the the vote recount back then as having favored Bush in some ways – particularly in the way that Gore was arguing it should have been recounted.
THANK YOU RALPH NADER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!