Rather Gave 23 Seconds to Recount; Couric Still Obsessed by Confused Voters; On China, Conservatives "Belligerent" & "Nasty"
1) In December Dan Rather impugned the "ideologically
motivated" U.S. Supreme Court for having, "in effect, handed the
presidency to Bush" by stopping a statewide hand count. But Wednesday
night after a newspaper hand count found more votes for Bush, Rather gave
it a vague 23 seconds and didn’t correct his spin.
2) Peter Jennings relayed the key finding: "The first
major, independent review of the Florida vote has found that President
Bush would have won by an even greater margin if the Supreme Court had not
stopped the recount." USA Today pointed out: "George W. Bush
would have won a hand count of Florida's disputed ballots if the standard
advocated by Al Gore had been used."
3) NBC’s Katie Couric seemed most intrigued by votes
Gore was supposedly denied. Interviewing a Miami Herald editor she made
sure viewers realized: "You all weren’t counting the 19,000...
estimated votes in Palm Beach County, where voters say they accidentally
pushed...the ballot for Pat Buchanan, right?"
4) CBS’s Bob Schieffer credited Republican Senator James
Jeffords’s turn against the Bush tax cut plan to his concern that it’s
"too big," but ABC’s Linda Douglass noticed he decided to
oppose Bush only after the Bush administration rejected his demands for
more spending.
5) A reporter at the White House press briefing: "On
child abuse, 18 percent reported reduction in child abuse funds, which is
about $15.7 million. How is that being a compassionate conservative?"
6) In stories on the showdown with China, ABC News has
assumed conservatives are the bad guys. Ted Koppel lamented that
"over there they also have their conservatives," Terry Moran
warned "Republicans in Congress are growing increasingly
belligerent" and Peter Jennings worried about a "nasty campaign
being waged against" the aircraft pilot by retired naval aviators.
7) FNC's Brit Hume reminded viewers of how Dan Rather
tried to discredit the vote certification by Katherine Harris and informed
them of how 60 Minutes chief Don Hewitt believes Rather "likes"
Bill Clinton.
1
Back in
December Dan Rather opened the CBS Evening News by asserting that the U.S.
Supreme Court, which "some say" was "politically and
ideologically motivated," had "ended Vice President Gore’s
contest of the Florida election and, in effect, handed the presidency to
Bush." But just under four months later, when a comprehensive
newspaper hand count of all the "undervotes" in the counties
which the U.S. Supreme Court order had stopped, to Rather’s
consternation, found Bush won by an even greater margin, Rather gave the
development a piddling 23 seconds. And, of course, he didn’t bother to
correct his impugning of the now vindicated U.S. Supreme Court.
Rather tried to dismiss the relevance of the
new tally as he ended his brief April 4 item by highlighting how a future
count will provide "a broader review," though he didn’t
explain that "broader" means counting those who voted for more
than one candidate, a highly subjective process:
"Several newspaper groups are out today with
the latest review of the Florida presidential vote. They found the hand
count method Al Gore favored would have given George Bush a bigger victory
margin. And the recount method Gore felt gave him the least hope shows he
actually may have beat Bush by three votes. A broader ballot review by
another newspaper consortium is due out next month."
Rather opened the December 13 CBS Evening News
by castigating the U.S. Supreme Court for making Bush the President by
stopping the hand count ordered by the Florida Supreme Court: "Good
evening. Texas Governor George Bush tonight will assume the mantle and the
honor of President-elect. This comes 24 hours after a sharply split and,
some say, politically and ideologically motivated U.S. Supreme Court ended
Vice President Gore’s contest of the Florida election and, in effect,
handed the presidency to Bush."
Later that night, during CBS’s prime time coverage
of the Gore and Bush speeches, Rather posed a question to legal analyst
Jonathan Turley which presumed the Supreme Court had damaged its
reputation: "In the wake of the Supreme Court decision where does the
court go from here in rebuilding its prestige and reputation?"
That’s a question Rather should be asking about
himself after he first suggested the court ruling had taken the decision
out of the hands of voters and then, when a media analysis found Bush
would have won even bigger if the count the court ordered stopped had been
completed, he didn’t bother to correct his earlier spin.
For a RealPlayer video clip of Rather’s December
13 opening, go to the December 14, 2000 CyberAlert:
http://archive.mrc.org/news/cyberalert/2000/cyb20001214.asp#6
For details about the newspaper analysis by
Knight Ridder and USA Today which Rather glossed over, see item #2 below.
2
ABC and
NBC played the story much straighter than CBS’s Dan Rather on Wednesday
night as both delivered full stories about the new hand count of "undervotes"
across Florida by Knight Ridder’s Miami Herald and Gannett’s USA Today
which determined that if Gore had gotten the statewide recount using his
preferred standard he would have endured a net loss in votes.
CNN’s Inside Politics ran a solid and
thorough piece by Candy Crowley on the recount, but it didn’t make it
into either of CNN’s prime time newscasts as CNN devoted the entire 8pm
EDT Wolf Blitzer Reports to China and didn’t mention it on the 10pm EDT
CNN Tonight. MSNBC’s The News with Brian Williams ran the same Kerry
Sanders piece which had aired on NBC Nightly News.
On ABC’s World News Tonight, anchor Peter
Jennings set up a story from Jackie Judd by leading with the recount’s
key finding that Bush gained votes: "The first major, independent
review of the Florida vote has found that President Bush would have won by
an even greater margin if the Supreme Court had not stopped the
recount."
Judd concluded: "So does this recount end
the debate? Probably not. Does it reconfirm this was a beyond belief close
election? Absolutely."
NBC’s Tom Brokaw introduced the April 4 NBC
Nightly News look at the development: "NBC News In Depth tonight, the
question we keep on asking: Who really did get the most votes in Florida,
George W. Bush or Al Gore? After 36 long days Bush was declared the winner
by just 537 votes. Is that the right answer? Tonight some affirming votes
in the first major statewide recount."
NBC reporter Kerry Sanders ran through the
numbers generated by the various counting standards employed by the
newspapers, specifically noting that Bush picked up votes using the
standard proscribed by the Florida Supreme Court for the recount the U.S.
Supreme Court blocked.
So, what did the review, completed by the
Knight Ridder-owned Miami Herald in conjunction with USA Today, find?
It’s a little complicated, so here’s an excerpt from USA Today’s
April 4 story, headlined: "Newspapers' recount shows Bush
prevailed." Reporter Dennis Cauchon explained:
George W. Bush would have won a hand count of Florida's disputed
ballots if the standard advocated by Al Gore had been used, the first full
study of the ballots reveals.
Bush would have won by 1,665 votes -- more than triple his official
537-vote margin -- if every dimple, hanging chad and mark on the ballots
had been counted as votes, a USA TODAY/Miami Herald/Knight Ridder study
shows. The study is the first comprehensive review of the 61,195 "undervote"
ballots that were at the center of Florida's disputed presidential
election.
The Florida Supreme Court ordered Dec. 8 that each of these ballots,
which registered no presidential vote when run through counting machines,
be examined by hand to determine whether a voter's intent could be
discerned. On Dec. 9, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the hand count before
it was completed....
USA TODAY, The Miami Herald and Knight Ridder newspapers hired the
national accounting firm BDO Seidman to examine undervote ballots in
Florida's 67 counties. The accountants provided a report on what they
found on each of the ballots.
The newspapers then applied the accounting firm's findings to four
standards used in Florida and elsewhere to determine when an undervote
ballot becomes a legal vote. By three of the standards, Bush holds the
lead. The fourth standard gives Gore a razor-thin win.
The results reveal a stunning irony. The way Gore wanted the ballots
recounted helped Bush, and the standard that Gore felt offered him the
least hope may have given him an extremely narrow victory. The vote totals
vary depending on the standard used:
-- Lenient standard. This standard, which was advocated by Gore, would
count any alteration in a chad -- the small perforated box that is punched
to cast a vote -- as evidence of a voter's intent. The alteration can
range from a mere dimple, or indentation, in a chad to its removal.
Contrary to Gore's hopes, the USA TODAY study reveals that this standard
favors Bush and gives the Republican his biggest margin: 1,665 votes.
-- Palm Beach standard. Palm Beach County election officials considered
dimples as votes only if dimples also were found in other races on the
same ballot. They reasoned that a voter would demonstrate similar voting
patterns on the ballot. This standard -- attacked by Republicans as
arbitrary -- also gives Bush a win, by 884 votes, according to the USA
TODAY review.
-- Two-corner standard. Most states with well-defined rules say that a
chad with two or more corners removed is a legal vote. Under this
standard, Bush wins by 363.
-- Strict standard. This "clean punch" standard would only
count fully removed chads as legal votes. The USA TODAY study shows that
Gore would have won Florida by 3 votes if this standard were applied to
undervotes....
END Excerpt from USA Today
For the entire story, go to:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2001-04-03-floridamain.htm
For many more details, including county by
county adjustments under each standard, go to: http://www.recount.usatoday.com
The newspaper hand count covered 59 of
Florida’s 67 counties. Of those, 22 used punch cards, 36 employed
optical scanners and one counted votes by hand. Seven counties (Broward,
Escambia, Hamilton, Madison, Manatee, Palm Beach and Volusia) and 137
Miami-Dade County precincts were not recounted again since hand recounts
had been completed in them and submitted to the Secretary of State and so
were not part of the Florida Supreme Court’s hand count order. For their
analysis, the newspapers adopted the official recounts in these seven
counties and thus started Bush at up 188 votes.
3
The
morning shows on Wednesday all focused on the new newspaper hand count
with ABC and NBC bringing aboard Miami Herald editors to discuss their
findings and ABC raising it with George Stephanopoulos. He suggested that
"Democrats will still be able to say, somehow, that they were robbed
because of unfair ballots...because the butterfly ballot was very
confusing," but he conceded, "they can’t say that the Supreme
Court took away their rights and would have cost them the election."
NBC’s Katie Couric seemed most intrigued by
scenarios in which Gore still could have won. Interviewing the Miami
Herald’s Executive Editor, Couric resurrected the Democratic complaint
about votes not even the Florida Supreme Court’s order covered:
"Meanwhile you all weren’t counting the 19,000, I guess, estimated
votes in Palm Beach County, where voters say they accidentally pushed or
pressed, the, the ballot for Pat Buchanan, right?"
-- ABC’s Good Morning America. MRC analyst
Jessica Anderson took down the analysis expressed by George Stephanopoulos
on the April 4 broadcast:
"This is very good news for Bush. When you
look at, when you look at this study by The Miami Herald, what it
essentially shows is that if the order by the Florida Supreme Court to
count all of the undercounts, undervotes in Florida, had gone through,
Bush still would have won. Now, there are a lot of uncertainties inside
the counts – which standard would have been used? Would the same
standard have been used in all the counties? But in almost all the
scenarios, Bush wins.
"One of the great ironies, it was Gore who
wanted the very loose standard, the Bush people who wanted the strict
standard. One of the only scenarios where Gore actually wins is under the
strictest possible standard of counting; he wins by three votes....But I
think the bottom line here for this is that this undercuts the
Democrats’ argument that the Republicans stole the election by having
the Supreme Court stop the count. Democrats will still be able to say,
somehow, that they were robbed because of unfair ballots, because of these
overvotes, because the butterfly ballot was very confusing, but they
can’t say that the Supreme Court took away their rights and would have
cost them the election."
During the 8am news update, Antonio Mora
announced: "A hand recount of the so-called undervotes in Florida
almost certainly would not have changed the result of the presidential
election. That’s the conclusion of a review by two newspapers, USA Today
and The Miami Herald." Jackie Judd then provided a further summary.
-- CBS’s The Early Show. During a first half
hour news update, MRC analyst Brian Boyd observed, Melissa McDermott stuck
to the key finding: "Another recount has declared George W. Bush the
winner in Florida. The Miami Herald and USA Today studied presidential
ballots involved in an aborted hand recount. The newspapers report that if
those ballots had been counted Mr. Bush's winning vote margin of 537 would
have tripled."
Co-host Jane Clayson interviewed Mark Seibel,
the Miami Herald’s Managing Editor for news, and she played it straight
without any antagonistic inquiries. She started off: "So even if the
U.S. Supreme Court had not stopped the manual recount, George W. Bush
would have won the election. Is that what the numbers show?"
-- NBC’s Today brought aboard Miami Herald
Executive Editor Martin Baron. After Katie Couric asked him what they
learned and what standard they applied to their counting, Couric wanted
him to confirm what she heard:
"So if the Republican standard had been used
in a statewide recount, Al Gore would have won, but, in, with looser
interpretations of the standards than George Bush, would have actually
gained quite a few votes? Is that accurate?"
Baron confirmed: "That’s right. If you
start from the point where the canvassing boards ended. You have to
remember that the number of canvassing boards, those in Palm Beach County
and Broward County, a 139 precincts in Miami-Dade County and a number of
other counties in the northern part of the state actually completed manual
recounts. If you go from that point forward, then if you use the loosest
possible standard, the most inclusive possible standard, then George W.
Bush still would have emerged the winner. Now you have to ask the question
of what would have happened if we don’t take into account what the
canvassing boards did. If we throw that out and we start from scratch. And
there the scenario changes entirely."
Couric hoped: "And in that case Al Gore
would have won?"
Baron: "In that case, under certain
scenarios, Al Gore would have won if you use the loosest possible
interpretation. The most inclusive possible interpretation of what
constitutes a valid and legal vote. Because what happened in those, in
those counties is that the canvassing boards discarded hundreds of ballots
as not being valid votes. Those were ballots that had pinpricks, it had
dimples, that had hanging chads and were identical in nature to other
ballots that they counted as legal and valid votes. So if you go back and
you reexamine what happened in Palm Beach County and in Broward County you
come up with a completely different result under the most inclusive
interpretation of what constitutes a legal and valid vote."
Then Couric, MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens
noticed, lectured Baron about a supposed problem he didn’t address:
"Meanwhile you all weren’t counting the 19,000, I guess, estimated
votes in Palm Beach County, where voters say they accidentally pushed or
pressed, the, the ballot for Pat Buchanan, right?"
Baron: "Well those are instances where
people punched for more than one candidate for President. So they may have
punched for Al Gore but also punched for Pat Buchanan. So they double
punched the ballot. That’s called an overvote. And those kinds of votes
are actually discarded under Florida law and are not counted."
Couric made sure viewers realized double votes
were not discerned: "And you all didn’t count them in the manual
recount either?"
Baron: "We did not. You have to remember
that the Florida Supreme Court ordered a manual recount of all undervotes.
Those are the votes, the votes that recorded no vote for President when
run through a machine. They did not order a manual recount of the
overvotes. And that’s what you’re talking about in the butterfly
ballot in, in Palm Beach County."
4
"If
it’s not dead it’s nearly dead," CBS’s Bob Schieffer pronounced
Wednesday night of Bush’s tax cut plan after a Senate vote. But NBC’s
Lisa Myers gave it a slightly better prognosis: "Tonight, the
President’s allies say the Bush tax cut is on life support, but not
necessarily dead."
Schieffer credited Republican Senator James
Jeffords’s turn against the bill to his believing the Bush tax cut is
"too big," but ABC’s Linda Douglass informed viewers he
decided to oppose Bush only after the Bush administration rejected his
demands for more spending.
Some brief quotes from ABC, CBS and NBC
coverage Wednesday night, April 4, of the Senate vote for an amendment by
Democrat Tom Harkin to reduce Bush’s tax cut by a third and spend the
money instead.
-- ABC’s World News Tonight. Linda Douglass
observed that Jeffords of Vermont "will not vote for the
President’s tax cut unless there’s an increase in funding for special
education, which has been his passion for 25 years."
-- CBS Evening News. Dan Rather seemed
gleeful: "There was a major setback today for President Bush’s big
tax cut plan. The Senate voted to reduce the cut by a third and use the
money for education programs and debt reduction."
Bob Schieffer stressed only concern about the
size of the tax cut, not how Senators might just want to spend more:
"It was two Northeastern Republicans who blew this open today: Chafee
of Rhode Island, who said all along that he thought the tax cut was too
big, and now Jeffords of Vermont, who says it’s looking that way to him
too. They both voted with the Democrats. It is much too early in the game
to say it’s all over. The Republican leader in the Senate, Trent Lott,
says he’ll make the Senate vote again on this. But the President’s tax
plan took a heavy, heavy hit tonight. If it’s not dead it’s nearly
dead."
-- NBC Nightly News. After a soundbite of
Democratic leader Tom Daschle asserting that Bush’s plan can now be
"officially proclaimed as dead," Myers concluded: "Tonight,
the President’s allies say the Bush tax cut is on life support, but not
necessarily dead. The question: How much will they have to give up to save
the patient."
5
One
small piece of evidence, as if any more are needed, that the Washington
press corps are a force for more spending and will portray any reduction
in government spending of tax dollars as contradicting compassion.
Check out this question posed at Wednesday’s
White House press briefing to Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. It came from
a female reporter whose voice I did not recognize and the TV cameras did
not show her:
"The President, as part of his campaign
promises, said that he was going to increase and help the National Health
Service Corps. There is now talking about that there is nothing increased
in there in terms of funding for training, and also on child abuse, 18
percent reported reduction in child abuse funds, which is about $15.7
million. How is that being a compassionate conservative?"
How does that question comport with a
journalist keeping her opinion to herself in order to be a dispassionate
reporter?
6
ABC:
Always Bashing Conservatives. In Tuesday and Wednesday night stories, on
the showdown with China, ABC News reporters have assumed conservatives are
the bad guys in the unfolding drama. Ted Koppel regretted that "over
there they also have their conservatives," Terry Moran warned that
"some Republicans in Congress are growing increasingly
belligerent" and Peter Jennings worried about a "nasty campaign
being waged against" the aircraft pilot by retired naval aviators who
think he should have ditched.
-- On Tuesday’s Nightline Ted Koppel
revealed how he assumes whoever is on the wrong side is
"conservative," so a hard-core Chinese communist is
"conservative" just as are those in the U.S. who are the most
anti-communist. Northern Virginia freelance writer Steve Allen alerted me
to Koppel’s question to former CIA Director James Woolsey:
"You know better than I do that over there
they also have their conservatives and maybe not their liberals, but
they’re less conservative, and I’m sure that they now are arguing in
similar fashion, ‘Hey, we don’t need this relationship with the United
States.’ Is there anything of value that we want to preserve here, even
after this incident is over, no matter how it turns out?"
-- On Wednesday’s World News Tonight
reporter Terry Moran employed a harsh term to describe conservatives who
have criticized China: "Some Republicans in Congress are growing
increasingly belligerent about the detained Americans."
Dana Rohrabacher: "They should be considered
as hostages being held by a hostile power."
-- Later on the same show Peter Jennings tried
to discredit those critical of the intelligence gathering plane’s pilot
by castigating them for sending "nasty" e-mail. He asked
Pentagon reporter John McWethy: "John, we noticed today that the
commander of the aircraft has not been identified and I gather that’s in
part because of a nasty campaign being waged against him."
McWethy confirmed: "There is an e-mail
campaign by retired Naval flyers, Peter, and they are saying that this
young pilot should have ditched his plane in the ocean so as, so that it
would not fall into Chinese hands. That, of course, officials say,
probably would have killed the entire crew."
7
CNN’s
Inside Politics read a short item Wednesday night about the revelation
that Dan Rather headlined a Democratic fundraiser on March 21 in Texas
(see the April 4 CyberAlert for details), but FNC’s Special Report with
Brit Hume showed a video clip of Rather from last fall to illustrate his
anti-Republican agenda. Hume also highlighted how 60 Minutes Executive
Producer Don Hewitt asserted that Rather "likes" Bill Clinton.
During the roundtable portion of the April 4
FNC show, Hume played a video compilation of Rather’s comments uttered
as Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris certified Bush the winner
on November 26. Rather tried to discredit Harris:
-- "Florida’s Republican Secretary of
State is about to announce the winner -- as she sees it and she decrees it
-- of the state’s potentially decisive 25 electoral votes."
-- "The believed certification -- as the
Republican Secretary of State sees it."
-- "She will certify -- as she sees it --
who gets Florida’s 25 electoral votes."
-- "The certification -- as the Florida
Secretary of State sees it and decrees it -- is being signed."
For more on Rather that night and a matching
video clip, go to: http://archive.mrc.org/news/cyberalert/2000/cyb20001130.asp#7
At the very end of his program, Hume picked up
on a comment by Don Hewitt quoted in the April 3 CyberAlert as he added a
matching video clip:
"Finally, Dan Rather says that regardless of
his starring at that Democratic Party fundraiser in Texas, people would
criticize him as being a closet Democrat, quote, ‘whether I deserve it
or not.’ Consider, though, what Don Hewitt, the legendary producer of 60
Minutes said in a C-SPAN interview last weekend, when asked about where
Bill Clinton might turn when he finally decides to grant somebody an
extended interview."
Don Hewitt on Booknotes: "He’s gonna do
something with somebody. My guess is he may do it with Dan Rather. He
likes Dan, and Dan likes him, I think."
Hume: "And that, as Walter Cronkite used to
say, is the way it is."
Exactly.