The media again

[Blue_In_AK]

Pardon me if this has been posted earlier, but I found the attached article on Bellacio.org quite interesting.

http://www.bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5010

January 7th print and other media were quite subdued in regards to the historical significance of the electors challenge on January 6th, 2005. As this was the third time in U.S. history that such an electors challenge has ever taken place, I thought it would be interesting to see what happened after the second, over thirty five years ago. I went to the local library and printed a copy of the front page of our local paper dated Tuesday, January 7th, 1969. Low and behold on the front page was the second story: "State Elector’s Vote is Upheld."

The 1969 story by Roy Parker, Jr. begins: "Congress rejected a move Monday to throw out the electoral vote which a North Carolina Republican elector cast for the third party candidate George Wallace. In a history-making interruption to the usual formality of counting electoral votes, the House and the Senate took two hours to debate a motion to throw out the vote of Rocky Mount eye doctor Lloyd Bailey. The Senate rejected the motion by a vote of 58 to 33. The House spurned it by a vote of 229 to 169. Then in a joint House-Senate session, Congress finished the formality of adding up the 301 electoral votes for Richard M. Nixon, 191 for Hubert Humphrey, and 46 for Wallace."

The 1969 Raleigh News and Observer placed this elector’s challenge story higher than Richard Nixon’s pay raise, an Allegheny plane crash that killed 11 (two weeks after an identical Convair 580 for the same airline crashed), and Nixon administration’s selection of John H. Chafee as the Secretary of the Navy and Dr. Robert C. Seamans as Chief of the Air Force.

Look what the 2005 Raleigh News and Observer thinks is more important than the current elector’s challenge that Barbara Boxer made possible:

"DOT to Slash Area Road Funds"
"Surgical Tools Cleaned improperly"
"Elections Hindered in Sections of Iraq"

In fact, the electors challenge did not make it to the front page at all! That’s right, the Iraq election did but not ours. Let’s not forget John Edwards is a North Carolinian making any electors challenge even more newsworthy. Anything with a chance to put a North Carolinian in the White House should be considered news. In addition, we were talking about 20 electoral votes not just one.

....more....

[New Earth]

1. absolutely

f*cking ridiculous. :puke:

[Demit]

2. That was a nice piece. I didn't know that about the 1969 electoral vote.

Nice piece of journalism, digging out that historical fact. Something I might have expected to see in a major mewspaper piece, back when journalists either remembered these facts on their own or took the time to research them.

Nice bit of comparing journalism then and now, too. Thanks for posting it.

[Supersedeas]

3. don't think the News and Observer is locally owned....but maybe

Durham Herald was bought and all local/family management were terminated the next day.

You might be surprised by who pulls the strings in local media rooms.