The AP writes what it calls “news” about the election audits
The headline reads, “It’s not just Arizona: Push to review 2020 ballots spreads.” Could have been an interesting and informative article. But the AP, under the guise of news, has published a piece that basically says, “A bunch of right-wing debunked conspiracy-theorist crazies have hired a bunch of other right-wing debunked conspiracy-theorist crazies to audit an election that has already been completely audited and proven to be perfectly fair and above-board.”
Not only that, but in the entire 1,000-plus-word article there’s no discussion of the actual bases for the right’s suspicion that fraud and/or important errors may have indeed occurred. I found this propaganda masquerading as news in the NY Post, which is a newspaper ordinarily on the right. Just goes to show what sort of reach and power the AP has.
I’ve written at some length about the New Hampshire audit (see this and this), inspired by a challenge from a local Democrat who had lost by a small margin and wanted a recount. The process uncovered huge anomalies, all in the Democrat’s favor and penalizing Republicans, and that’s what triggered the calls for a larger audit. This was no conspiracy theory; it was cold hard fact, and disturbing fact at that, fully justifying a closer look.
But this is how the AP article characterizes the New Hampshire effort:
A Georgia judge last week awarded a group the chance to review mail ballots in a large Georgia county that includes Atlanta. Officials in a rural Michigan county have expressed interest in a review of their voting machines.A similar debate has caused sharp divisions in a New Hampshire town.
The AP writers are banking on the fact that its readers are ignorant of what actually transpired in Windham, NH. The article adds:
Arizona has also inspired calls by pro-Trump groups to push for their own pick to take over a post-election audit of a statehouse race in Windham, New Hampshire — home of former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
That sentence contains a link to this AP article that goes into more depth on the Windham situation but continues to couch it as the effort of crazy debunked conspiracy theorists. The logic of the calls for a widening audit that gets to the bottom of the problems is ignored, and the efforts are treated as bogus despite the anomalies found and the lack of knowledge about what other races were affected, and how much they were affected.
Nothing will stop the press from continuing to do this sort of thing, because it’s been so enormously productive for them in terms of political results.
The AP has not been a “news” organization for some years now.
Same people that were “Shocked! Shocked, I say.”, on being told that Hamas was using offices in the same building that they inhabited in Gaza.
National Review Online ran an article penned by an Arizona Republican Rep who thinks that by stating he voted for Trump gives him credibility in his attempt to trash the Miacopa County audit as conspiracy theory. While he parrots the four or five claims that the media and Democrats have been making, he never mentions any of the already released issues that have been raised. In addition, he never talks about NH, MI, PA or GA.
The problem or malpractice is not in what is written, but in what is conveniently ignored.
The state of American journalism is illustrated by the fact that you can get more information about the election fraud from the Daily Mail than any U.S. newspaper. My local rag always refers to any such claims as baseless or false with no explanation as to why that is the case. It is the narrative that they need and they are not changing. New facts from the audits? Nothing to see there, move on. Now we know what it was like in Russia in the days of Pravda.
The AP along with the rest of the MSM fulfill all of the qualifications for malpractice suits. Free speech is not a license for malpractice.
Malpractice requires the satisfaction of the 4 ‘D’s. Violation of Duty, Deviation from Established Professional Standards, Direct Causation, and Damages.
The media has a duty to endeavor to provide accurate information to the public. Journalism, by definition is a public service.
Journalism has well established professional standards of objectivity.
Much of the American public’s demonstrated ignorance is a direct result of the media’s violation of journalism’s professional standards.
Any honest, unbiased observer would testify that the damage to society is massive and undeniable.
Nothing will change until media malpractice results in personal consequence.
There have been very interesting developments in the Windham NH audit. Watch the YouTube channel by Nick Moseder for lots of detail. In the most recent one, https://youtu.be/bHQA_7_djjc, he summarizes how an auditor found evidence of a machine being wiped illegally by a Dominion tech. Look at the four most recent videos for discussion of all the fraud, including multiple machines that flip “overvotes” from Trump to Biden in Windham and now other counties that they’ve checked.
One is a video of the NH Secretary of State and a buddy in 2008(!) illegally trying to move a ballot box from a secured room out into the hall where they can come back later and do whatever with them. Even the tamper proof tape he put on the box, isn’t.
“I found this propaganda masquerading as news in the NY Post, which is a newspaper ordinarily on the right. Just goes to show what sort of reach and power the AP has.” – Neo
I have noticed this in all the “conservative” outlets from time to time, and it is infuriating. Someone just pulls these off the AP wire and throws them online without even reading them, much less editing (or, better, trashing) them.
With friends like these….
Roy is right, of course. And since AP “reporters” never noticed who their building-mates were, why should we trust their observations about anything else?
“..home of former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.” – Neo
Notice that the tarring by association (and Corey only lives in the same town, not the same building) only ever goes one way.
However, there are some indications he is at least aware of the audit. The internet search results (Brave browser/DDG) are all over the left-center axis (aggressively involved pushing Trump’s baseless claims vs. reasonably concerned about election integrity; no right-wing sites on the first page), so I tried to pick a couple of stories with less inflammatory rhetoric, although the political views of the authors are still evident.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a36399683/corey-lewandoski-windham-new-hampshire-ballot-recount-2020/
Of course, the rest of the AP article says nothing of the kind; an unbiased reader (not that there are any these days) would not see anything remarkable about any of Lewandowski’s comments.
https://www.wmur.com/article/nh-primary-source-trump-taking-personal-interest-in-windham-election-controversy-audit/36345527
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/05/27/trump-cheered-an-election-review-in-this-tiny-new-hampshire-town—auditors-just-said-theres-no-proof-of-fraud/?sh=15b882144690
Corey’s not in this post, but it’s an interesting nugget of information that apparently hasn’t made it past the AP gate-checkers, although Conservative Treehouse noticed it. (May 14)
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/hold-new-hampshire-election-audit?utm_medium=social_media&utm_source=twitter_social_icon&utm_campaign=social_icons#article
“There have been very interesting developments in the Windham NH audit. Watch the YouTube channel by Nick Moseder for lots of detail.” – Paul
How long will Moseder’s videos be available?
I hope he is double-posting them on the right-wing social media outlets.
“The problem or malpractice is not in what is written, but in what is conveniently ignored.” DanJ1
Given the current “oh yeah, about those debunked false theories regarding the Wuhan Lab Leak theory of Covid…” and the boasting post about “fortifying the election” by committing rampant fraud and then calling Republican questions “baseless claims without evidence” of the things they just admitted doing, I’m assuming that anything removed or suppressed in any way by Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, etc etc etc will be close to 100% true.
or
Would that happen to be the same “AP” that denied adamantly that the building housing its Gaza offices also housed Hamas operations….?
https://nypost.com/2021/05/17/ap-slammed-for-claiming-it-was-unaware-of-hamas-presence/
https://www.foxnews.com/media/tommy-vietor-israel-gaza-hamas
DanJ1 (1:45 pm) concluded, “The problem or [of?] malpractice is not in what is written, but in what is conveniently ignored.”
Yes. The mainstream media has the power to select what’s important, to amplify, to exaggerate, to spin/slant, and to misrepresent (i.e., *lie*), but an immensely important power, one often overlooked as a *power* but near the top of the list of powers wielded by the mainstreamers, is the power to *ignore*.
M J R— The most glaring example of that “power to ignore” is the spiking of the Hunter Biden laptop story during the run-up to the election. This would include informal polls and inquiries of Biden voters who expressed, generally speaking: “I wish I had known that before I voted.”