Mark Crispin Miller: Why Won't The Media Touch My Book?

[althecat]

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0601/S00170.htm

Why Won't The Media Touch This Book?

An email from Mark Crispin Miller
Regarding his new book Fooled Again Bush/Cheney stole their re-election in 2004.

Bush/Cheney stole their re-election in 2004.

They stole it not just in Ohio, but all throughout the USA, from coast to coast.

They stole it not by using any single ploy, but through a stealthy combination of computerized vote theft, bureaucratic monkey business, systematic shortages of viable equipment and old-fashioned dirty tricks, including rampant bullying, disinformation and obstructionism.

Such foul play was not apparent "on both sides" in the 2004 election, but was committed mainly by the Bush Republicans.

The evidence is both abundant and precise--and it's all here in Fooled Again.

"This second heist of the White House is one of the great untold stories of our time - even though it was largely carried out in plain sight. Miller performs the simple but increasingly rare act of journalism and gathers a mountain of overwhelming evidence from publicly available material. This is no "conspiracy theory" stitched together from anonymous sources, strained inferences and dark innuendo, but a solid case based on official records, sworn testimony, eyewitness accounts, news reports - and the Bushists' own words."Those words were published in an excellent review of Fooled Again that will come out tomorrow--in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Also tomorrow, a number of Web sites will be posting a review of Fooled Again by Paul Craig Roberts, who was Assistant Treasury Secretary under Ronald Reagan. A genuine conservative, Roberts is unafraid to read the evidence and face reality:

"This second heist of the White House is one of the great untold stories of our time - even though it was largely carried out in plain sight. Miller performs the simple but increasingly rare act of journalism and gathers a mountain of overwhelming evidence from publicly available material. This is no "conspiracy theory" stitched together from anonymous sources, strained inferences and dark innuendo, but a solid case based on official records, sworn testimony, eyewitness accounts, news reports - and the Bushists' own words."

Those words were published in an excellent review of Fooled Again that will come out tomorrow--in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Also tomorrow, a number of Web sites will be posting a review of Fooled Again by Paul Craig Roberts, who was Assistant Treasury Secretary under Ronald Reagan. A genuine conservative, Roberts is unafraid to read the evidence and face reality:

"Miller describes considerably more election fraud than voting machines programmed to count a proportion of Kerry votes as Bush votes. Voters were disenfranchised in a number of ways. Miller reports incidences of intimidation of, and reduced voting opportunities for, poorer voters who tend to vote Democrat....

"The outcome of the 2004 presidential election has always struck me as strange. Although Kerry was a poor candidate and evaded the issue most on the public's mind, by November of 2004 a majority of Americans were aware that Bush had led the country into a gratuitous war on the basis either of incompetence or deception. By November 2004 it was completely clear that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and that Bush had rushed to war. People were concerned by the changing rationales that Bush was offering for going to war. Moreover, the needless war was going badly and the results bore no relationship to the rosy scenario painted at the time of the invasion. It seems contrary to American common sense for voters to have reelected a president who had failed in such a dramatic way."

Roberts--a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, and a former contributing editor for National Review--concludes with a warning that the Founding Fathers would appreciate:

"Miller directs our attention to Bush's high-handed treatment of dissenters. If electronic voting machines programmed by private Republican firms remain in our future, dissent will become pointless unless it boils over into revolution. Power-mad Republicans need to consider the result when democracy loses its legitimacy and only the rich have anything to lose."

Despite its wealth of evidence--meticulously documented in 57 pages of detailed endnotes--and despite the standing of its author (Miller is an NYU professor with a solid global reputation), Fooled Again has been pointedly ignored by the national media.

There have been no national reviews of Fooled Again.

No network or cable TV show would have the author on to talk about the book.

NPR has refused to have him on. Even shows that Miller has appeared on in the past, and more than once ("The Connection," "On the Media," "Talk of the Nation"), have refused to him on to talk about this book.

Only one daily newspaper--the Florida Sun-Sentinel--has published a review.

WHYY, the NPR affiliate in Philadelphia, recently refused to broadcast paid ads for the book, offering several different and unlikely explanations.

Aside from C-SPAN, Air America and Pacifica, no national media would have the author on to tell his fellow-citizens about his findings.

Those few reviews of Fooled Again that have appeared were mostly positive: Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, The Florida Sun-Sentinel, The Chicago Reader, The Baltimore Chronicle and other publications have all stressed the book's importance and the soundness of its evidence. (Fooled Again is certainly the only book in history to be highly praised by both The Christian Century and Hustler!) In short, the media would seem to have buried Fooled Again not because of any weakness in the book itself, but for political reasons above all.

Right now the very soul of our democracy is at unprecedented risk. The president is openly contemptuous of the very system that the Founding Fathers put in place. He seeks to rule regardless of what Congress and the people want, does all he can to silence the free press, has recklessly subjected millions of Americans to government surveillance, and demands the right to bomb and torture other peoples as the spirit moves him.

And all of this goes on with little protest from the Democratic Party, which now behaves not like the patriotic opposition but merely as a bunch of bystanders afraid to speak out loud and clear against the Bush administration's un-American activities.

At this moment, it is crucial that we openly discuss the likelihood that this administration was not duly re-elected in 2004, any more than it was properly elected in 2000. That national debate must take place now, so that the people understand that their democracy had been subverted--and, even more important, so that we can begin to talk about electoral reform in these United States as soon as possible. The crucial democratic conversation won't take place until the scandal of the last election finally resonates; and that is what impelled Mark Crispin Miller to write Fooled Again. His fellow-citizens deserve no less than to be told what's in this deeply edifying book.

Mark Crispin Miller is a seasoned and effective interviewee, who has appeared on many news programs both in the US and abroad, including The PBS News Hour, Frontline, The O'Reilly Factor, Washington Journal, Democracy Now! and Bill Moyers's The Public Mind.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0601/S00170.htm

[ixion]

1. we need to try and create a buzz around this

I've noticed that when we buzz loud enough, that eventually the MSM pics it up, if only for a short while.

[MelissaB]

2. This is important.

Off to the greatest. :kick:

[applegrove]

3. Because the media themselves fell for the GOP trick of publishing

exit polls - which kept people home. They went to the coverage of the election with those polls. If you had embarrasingly published wrong information you would not mention it too.

Didn't you notice the media refused to do exit polls in the Nov 2005 elections?

They learnt their lesson. Don't do anything that isn't the letter of the law or the GOP lie machine will take advantage of you.

[organik]

8. Exit polls were wrong? Riiiiiiight.

What?

What is this nonsense you are spewing? The GOP published exit polls that kept people home? Where did you pull that one out of? They didn't, and probably won't do exit polls in the future because they can expose widespread fraud, like in the ukraine!

It's truly sad that people swallow "the exit polls were wrong" line like that...so gullible.

I don't put all my faith in the exit polls, but considering the ample evidence presented in "fooled again" to support widespread fraud - sure lends those results some credibility.

The corporate media does the corporate president's will - that's all it is.

The media doesn't avoid this story because of being embarrased, they run embarrasing ridiculous stories every day.

[applegrove]

12. I actually read a bit on Miller's book. He mentions it too. That exit

polls used to be rock solid. Until every race Bush has been in - including Texas. And places where there are no machines.

[organik]

13. And by no machines, you mean -

No DRE's, or opscans, tabulators? There's almost always a hackable machine somewhere in the mix.

[Febble]

14. Well, except it isn't true

exit polls were wildly off in 1988 and in 1992, except that in both cases the winner was so far ahead, people don't seem to remember. And they were pretty good in 2000, except for Florida, which no poll could have got right anyway (and of course they shouldn't have called it).

The other reason people don't remember, is that the tend to remember the final projection, which, as we know, includes data from the vote returns. So people think the raw data did that all by itself. It didn't, ever.

[Febble]

15. I don't think there is any reason at all

to believe that they "won't do exit polls in the future". Where did you hear that?

The only thing I've heard is that they will try not to release any projections for any state until all three calls are in, i.e. until close of poll. And at least in 2008 you'll know what to look out for, and how the projections are made.

BTW, I don't think there is any evidence that the exit polls in Ukraine were particularly accurate, although they may have been. But when you catch people pouring acid into ballot boxes, then you know that there is something wrong with the election.

(edited for clarity)

[organik]

17. With elections like these

it seems exit polls are all we've got. They had been getting better and better, and supposedly 2004 was the most researched attempt at an accurate exit poll there's ever been - except the pollsters were totally wrong?

Without exit polls to suggest the possibility of a fraudulent count, do we just accept the results at face value? Without the election system being reformed, all we've got is the exit polls. Without exit results until the close of the polls, what's the use of the exit polls if they're cooked at the same time the results are. Pointless.

I'd personally prefer real-time streaming data as it's collected, precinct by precict. The most open and visible exit polls possible.

[Febble]

18. Well, first of all, I agree

that you need election reform. Your elections need to be made secure, and you need some kind of audit system. No question.

But exit polls are not an audit, and can never be. They are not particularly accurate, and I think have gained their reputation for accuracy because the projections made from them are always, in the end, adjusted in line with data from the vote count.

They are not a parallel election, and are not intended to be. They are designed to give running projections of the likely results based on the best data available at any given time. Before the results start to come in the best data is exit poll responses, plus pre-election polls. After the results start to come in, results are included as well.

Yes, they got more "accurate" this year, but only in the sense that they raised the criterion by which states could be "called" - which, in essence, meant waiting until more votes were in than usual.

And the reason they were "totally wrong" this time, with their early projections, is that the race was close. They were just about as wrong in 1988 and 1992, except that in 1988 Bush had a big lead anyway, and in 1992, Clinton had a big lead anyway, so people don't remember.

I'm certainly not claiming the election was clean or secure - it was clearly neither. But if exit polls are all you've got, you are in big trouble, because they are simply not accurate. If we try to reverse-engineer them to find out what they were saying before being "weighted" in various ways (not simply to the count but for bias in the sample as evidenced by various pieces of evidence, including pre-election polls and data on age, race and sex of non-respondents) we find that in every year there is a bias in favour of voters for the Democratic candidate. In 2004 it was substantially greater than usual. Which could have been due to fraud (but I think it largely wasn't). But there is no a priori reason for thinking it couldn't have been bias in the poll. It is BECAUSE the pollsters expect bias in the poll that they weight the responses to any data that will correct the bias.

And that is why the projections tend to be "accurate". The raw data isn't, as is evidenced by the age/race/sex comparisons between respondents and non-respondents. It always has to be weighted.

Exit polls won't tell us what happened in 2004, and they won't tell us what happened in 2008 either. You need to get a secure and auditable election system. Also end voter suppression, which is a large effect, and doesn't show up in exit polls anyway.

[applegrove]

19. I agree that exit polls are not a audit of the election. Still - all media

outlets and editorials and studies admitted they were off this time - the early leaked polls. And anything out of sinc is suspect.

For sure we need transparent election laws. And electoral reform. I come from Canada and today we have an election. I cannot tell you how great it feels that all our ballots are done by hand and easily recounted. And they will all be tonight.

It is a tragedy and a travesty that so many in the USA don't trust the system and the BUSH WH does dick all to try and 'solve that issue'. Look for them never to solve issues that pay off to the GOP. That is what governance means to them - all politics all spoils, none of benevolence of formerly career public servants. Just about raw power for elites for them. Sick.

[OnTheOtherHand]

20. two points of fact

(1) Febble provided lots of good info on accuracy, but she didn't directly address the premise that the exit polls had been getting better and better. 1996 and 2000 were both significantly better than either 1992 or 2004; not much difference between '96 and '00. In 1988, there were (I think) four different exit polls, and I don't think the best estimates from any of them has been released -- so we really don't know how accurate they were. According to the E/M evaluation report, the average within-precinct error was lower in the 1988 CBS/New York Times exit poll than in the 1992 poll. I have never seen error estimates for 1972, 1976, 1980, or 1984 (in most of these years there was more than one exit poll). In short: the idea that the exit polls "had been getting better and better" doesn't really hold up.

(2) I believe most of the exit poll results that have been memorialized on exit-pollz.net (or whatever that URL was) were posted after the polls closed, but before precinct vote returns were available. Certainly the Ohio results there look just like the ones I saw posted a few minutes after the Ohio polls closed. So, preventing leaks before the polls close would not keep the exit polls from being useful, and/or bloody confusing, in assessing the official counts.

Oh, maybe (3) -- the exit pollsters weren't totally wrong. They said Ohio and the national popular vote were too close to call.

As for the rest, it's all open to debate.

[southwood]

25. Broader picture

Back in late 2004, early 2005 - as a foreigner - I spent a major portion of my time to reading and understanding election mess 2004. Basically, as I recall, exit polls in 1988 and 1992 were off but better than 2004. One would expect a learning curve of sorts.
The Germans, gründlich (thorough) as ever, and in particular Forschungsgruppe Wahlen for ZDF-Television manage to predict their general elections with great accuracy. The BBC has been off on British general elections in the past, but predicted the last one with exceptional precision.
How come the Greatest Nation on Earth can't manage a decent exit poll?

Basically, as I came to understand at the time, the election system, if it's worth calling that, is such a mess that - so to speak - the election results should have been canceled and the election redone under UN supervision. The system (or systems) are probably below 3rd world standards.
What struck me most was the concept of "pre-challenging" the legitimacy of voter registrations (republicans going over voter lists, and throwing out likely democrat voters, i.e. African Americans, who then found themselves forced to vote provisional, only to have their votes thrown out). In most civilized nations the government maintains a 'population register' so that there cannot be any doubt on who is eligible to vote.

Given the benefit of the doubt, I think the raw data of the E/M exit poll had it right and GWB was not the winner.

[EFerrari]

27. If that idiot won this election, I'll eat my dog. It didn't happen. n/t

[OnTheOtherHand]

28. well, not exactly

Certainly one expects the pollsters to learn from their mistakes, but that is no guarantee of increasing accuracy. It appears, for instance, that the exit poll errors are larger in U.S. elections with higher turnout -- which could reflect some combination or interaction of (1) a different electorate and (2) greater difficulty for the interviewers in approaching a random sample of the people streaming by. (We've talked about the latter here some -- I can revisit it if you like.) Probably there is no methodological innovation that can wipe out bias, although deploying more interviewers to large precincts might help.

I don't have the straight skinny on the 2005 German exit poll, but according to a report in the Guardian, the initial ZDF projection had CDU up 4, while the final margin was about 1.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=394113&mesg_id=394113
That's about half the size of the U.S. 2004 discrepancy, but still substantial.

The U.S. exit poll was pretty decent for its purposes. It generated scads and scads of interesting tabulations for talking heads to discuss. Its errors didn't lead to any wrong calls, and in a less competitive election probably wouldn't have been noticed. (The errors in 1992 were of a similar magnitude -- indeed smaller than 2004, but apparently large enough to 'indicate a Kerry victory' if they were mechanically applied to the 2004 results.)

The U.S. election system is certainly a mess. The 2004 outcome in Ohio was not determined by uncounted provisional ballots; much less is the proportion of provisional ballots nearly large enough to explain the exit poll discrepancy there. Ohioans who didn't vote at all because they were unreasonably purged -- however many that may have been, as some folks are trying to sort out -- would not show up in the exit polls. So, vote suppression efforts and exit polls just don't seem to have much to do with each other.

(EDIT: Most of my post addresses exit polls in response to the post it responds to ;). But I'm not trying to marginalize vote suppression because it doesn't have much to do with exit polls -- on the contrary, I think it is more important.)

[peace frog]

4. If the US media won't touch it, then perhaps

Mr Miller should approach the mainstream media of other countries. Often when vitally important news is ignored here but trumpeted widely elsewhere (particularly when the story picks up speed and spreads worldwide) only THEN will the US media report it, however grudgingly.

[roseBudd]

5. What about the Daily Show, he was on but not to talk about his book n/t

[EFerrari]

6. What can we do?

Ikeep giving my copy away and buying a new one.

Should we send copies to local book reviewers?

To political reporters?

?

[Higans]

16. Brilliant!

Included with a copy of 1984 by George Orwell.

http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/

[kster]

7. Question? In this video Mr.Turley

talks about not being Silent about the NSA wiretaps. Would this apply to the election theft machines? Its WMP at the end 2:15 on, and if so what should we be doing about the silence from our Government about the election theft machines?

http://www.canofun.com/blog/videos/2006/TurleyPresidentCommittedACrime.asx

[Amaryllis]

9. Because the media is essentially owned by the same corporations as the

voting system companies are. Follow the money.

[Amaryllis]

10. althecat, would recommend you cross post this on GD politics. It's

very important.

[EFerrari]

11. There's a GD thread. Let me go get the link -- here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x200792

[helderheid]

21. Trying to get international media on this - post in GD:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x215875

[EFerrari]

22. I think this is a great idea. n/t

[helderheid]

23. thanks - unfortunately that post keeps falling off the front page! Any

help keeping it kick would be greatly appreciated!! :)

[EFerrari]

24. Okay! n/t

[orleans]

26. kick. n/t