Small point about holding the corporate media accountable.

[EFerrari]

Our CA DUers already know that the San Francisco Chronicle was instrumental in smearing our Dem, elected Sec of State, Kevin Shelley, out of office. This paved the way for the appointment of Rep. Bruce McPherson, who is galloping to certify Diebold in California.

The Chron ran front page story after story, with big screaming headlines for months until Shelley resigned. I find no evidence that they ever published the fact that Shelley was exonerated of any wrongdoing by the CA Attorney General.

So, thinking maybe I was just not searching well in the Chron archives, I emailed the last reporter that wrote about this situation. Nothing back. So, I emailed our usually responsive Reader's Rep. Nothing. So, I called and left a message. Nothing and today, it's been three weeks.

So, I called again and left another message. I don't want to get into a fight with the Chronicle and will not. We have good friends who work there. But, they need to answer my question because the smear they enabled is in part why today we're fighting off Diebold again.

[pauldp]

1. Have they covered McPherson and the Diebold certification at all?

[EFerrari]

2. I'd have to go look. Okay, yes they have.

There are three stories. The presentation is, McPherson is being very careful before certifying Diebold.

"This is part of our security mission,'' said Nghia Nguyen Demovic, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state's office. "We want to make sure that every vote is counted and registered correctly.''

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/25/BAG13FTR9E1.DTL&hw=Diebold&sn=001&sc=1000

[pauldp]

3. Thanks for the link. They ommitted a few crucial details.

Namely the restrictions placed on BBV for the test and they failed to mention that the Diebold source code is proprietary and secret. I'm going to write John Wildermuth.

[EFerrari]

4. Please do. He's tone deaf or under restriction 'far as I can tell n/t

[Time for change]

5. I think that issues having to do with holding our corporate media

accountable are very large points.

I think that our corporate media is almost as big a threat to our democracy as is our lousy election system, and bese sides, they are largely responsible for the sorry state of our election system.

[EFerrari]

6. Reply from the Reader's Rep:

ubject: RE: A question about the Chronicle's Kevin Shelley reportage
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 16:21:02 -0800
From: "SFReaderRep" <[e-mail]> Add to Address BookAdd to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
To: "Elizabeth Ferrari" <sfexpat2000@
Ms. Ferrari ...

My apologies for the slow response. I'm about 200 e-mails in arrears and the backlog grows.

Regardless of the Channel 7 report, the Attorney General did not exonerate Kevin Shelley. That because he never charged Kevin Shelley with anything to begin with. The AG's office was investigating Julie Lee. On April 8, the office accused Lee of grand theft, as well as other felony counts. A Chronicle story on the following day cited sources saying that Shelley had no knowledge that there was misuse of taxpayer funds.

Shelley was the subject of a legislative committee inquiry. That ended quietly when Shelley resigned. A separate federal investigation into handling of Help America Vote Act money remains, according to the Chronicle's Sacramento bureau chief, Paul Feist. The paper has not checked into the status of that investigation in some time and should do so.

Finally, on May 6 the paper wrote that a federal grand jury had indicted Lee for mail fraud and witness tampering. In that story the paper said:

"Neither the state nor the federal charges name Shelley as a defendant, nor do they indicate he had knowledge of the transactions. Shelley steadfastly insisted he had nothing to do with the alleged scheme, but he resigned from office in March in the face of mounting investigations of the donations, as well as his handling of federal voting funds and his treatment of employees."

Once again, my apologies for the slow response.

Dick Rogers
Readers' Representative
San Francisco Chronicle
[phone]
[e-mail]

[EFerrari]

7. And, a reply to my follow up:

Subject: RE: A question about the Chronicle's Kevin Shelley reportage
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 17:40:10 -0800
From: "SFReaderRep" <[e-mail]> Add to Address BookAdd to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
To: "Elizabeth Ferrari" <sfexpat2000
Elizabeth ...

I will pester Paul Feist into doing it.

Dick

-----Original Message-----
From: Elizabeth Ferrari
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2005 5:32 PM
To: SFReaderRep
Subject: RE: A question about the Chronicle's Kevin Shelley reportage

Thank you, Dick.

I hope someone does provide an updated report on this story.

best,
Elizabeth Ferrari