On Arafat: "One Man's Terrorist is Another's Freedom Fighter" --11/12/2004

1. On Arafat: "One Man's Terrorist is Another's Freedom Fighter"
Many network journalists on Thursday refused to condemn Yasser Arafat as a "terrorist," treating that view of him as nothing more than how his enemies and Israelis saw him as they gave equal weight to those who saw him as a hero. ABC's Diane Sawyer best encapsulated the media myopia: "There may not be any other man in history who better embodies the saying that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." In the evening, World News Tonight anchor Charles Gibson referred to how "some view his passing as the loss of a great leader, the only one modern-day Palestinians have known. Others see his death as one more terrorist gone." NBC anchor Tom Brokaw touted how "to his followers, he was the shrewd military and political leader of their cause against the Israelis. To the Israelis, Arafat was the chief terrorist." CBS's Mark Phillips described two Arafats: "He was a freedom fighter, who in his ever-present military uniform and kafiyah, was the champion of his down-trodden people. He was a terrorist whose chosen tactics left a trail of innocent blood."

2. NBC Undermines Olbermann, But He Plows Forward on Vote Fraud
For the fourth straight night in a row on Thursday, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann devoted a significant portion of his Countdown program to more ranting and raving under the "making sure your vote counts" moniker. Earlier on NBC, Tom Brokaw treated as newsworthy how "more than a few people are convinced that their votes didn't count, that the results can't be trusted, and they're having a busy conversation on the Internet in cyberspace." Neither Brokaw nor NBC's Chip Reid, in his subsequent story, mentioned Olbermann's obsession, but Reid, who undermined some of the allegations touted by Olbermann, could have been talking about Olbermann when he concluded that "those explanations are likely to have little affect on the President's Internet critics." Olbermann on Thursday night forwarded the claim that in New Hampshire, in "all 71 precincts where President Bush improved upon his results from 2000, 73 percent of those used optical scanners" and fretted about how the media are not pursuing the theories spouted by bloggers.

3. CNN's Brown Snidely Hints Purple Hearts in Iraq Will Be Suspect
Aaron Brown's snide shot of the day. Upon pointing out a photo in Stars and Stripes of some soldiers in Iraq who had earned Purple Hearts, during his Wednesday night "Morning Papers" segment on CNN's NewsNight, Brown sarcastically remarked: "Some day, one of them will run for President and someone will say they didn't earn the Purple Heart. Welcome to America."

On Arafat: "One Man's Terrorist is Another's
Freedom Fighter"

Many network journalists on Thursday refused to condemn Yasser Arafat as a "terrorist," treating that view of him as nothing more than how his enemies and Israelis saw him as they gave equal weight to those who saw him as a hero. ABC's Diane Sawyer best encapsulated the media myopia: "There may not be any other man in history who better embodies the saying that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." In the evening, World News Tonight anchor Charles Gibson referred to how "some view his passing as the loss of a great leader, the only one modern-day Palestinians have known. Others see his death as one more terrorist gone." NBC anchor Tom Brokaw touted how "to his followers, he was the shrewd military and political leader of their cause against the Israelis. To the Israelis, Arafat was the chief terrorist." CBS's Mark Phillips described two Arafats: "He was a freedom fighter, who in his ever-present military uniform and kafiyah, was the champion of his down-trodden people. He was a terrorist whose chosen tactics left a trail of innocent blood."

On Good Morning America, Sawyer concluded her profile of Arafat: "For most Israelis, many Jews, he was a bloody terrorist and nothing more. Yet elsewhere in the world, even among Arabs who questioned his leadership, he was treated as a hero, freedom fighter, revolutionary. A diminutive man who became a larger than life symbol of the Palestinian dream." Her co-host, Charles Gibson, then claimed that Arafat "was an enigma to some extent." Gibson asked George Mitchell: "I'm curious what you think we lost last night. Did we lose someone who at his core was still a terrorist or did we lose someone who at his core was a peacemaker?"

Brian Williams, the soon-to-be-anchor of the NBC Nightly News, lightly compared the Israeli/Palestinian battle to the Red state/Blue state split in the U.S. On MSNBC's Imus In the Morning on Thursday, Don Imus asked Williams: "Was he a beloved figure within the Palestinian population? How exactly did they view him?" Williams replied, on camera, from Ramallah: "Oh, absolutely. You know, it goes right up, it's like in the last conversation you and I had was how the Red states and the Blue states don't want to talk to each other and it's a Venus-Mars thing. This goes right up to the 1967 Green Line, in effect. He is called 'father' by most Palestinians of two generations. He is called a murderer and a terrorist by so many Israelis. Now, we'll see how history treats him, but really, before Yasser Arafat, there were no Palestinians, they were called 'refugees,' and he gave a definition to a nation, to a community."

"Nation"? Arafat made sure it never became one.

CBS's Early Show, however, stated as a fact that Arafat was a terrorist even as the CBS hosts noted his peace prize. Renee Syler described him as "a master terrorist who later won a Nobel Peace Prize." An hour later, Harry Smith called Arafat "a terrorist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994."

A further rundown of how the Thursday, November 11 broadcast network morning and evening shows described Arafat:

-- World News Tonight. Anchor Charles Gibson, filling in for Peter Jennings who was on his way to Ramallah, opened:
"A giant question mark now hangs over that region of the world. Yasser Arafat died last night. Some, thinking hopefully, see his death as a new opportunity for peace. Others worry a vacuum of leadership on the Palestinian side may only bring more violence. Some view his passing as the loss of a great leader, the only one modern-day Palestinians have known. Others see his death as one more terrorist gone. Arafat's body has been returned to the Middle East for a funeral in one location, burial in another."

After a piece from David Wright, Jon Donvan profiled Arafat and blamed the assassination of Rabin, not Arafat's rejection of a Palestinian state offered in 2000, for the lack of a Palestinian nation: "The image of Yasser Arafat swung to extremes. To some, especially his own people, he was a freedom fighter. He put them on the map. He gave every day of his life to the cause. When he told the UN in 1974 don't let the olive branch fall from my hand Palestinians felt, finally, the world was hearing Arafat, and them. His renown was their dignity. But Arafat was also wearing a gun belt that day. And that was the other extreme. Under his watch, Palestinian terrorism hit full stride in the '70s. The label 'terrorist' stuck. As one Israeli leader, Yitzhak Rabin, put it in the 1980s:"
Rabin: "Mr. Arafat is one of the greatest liars on earth."
Donvan: "And yet Rabin would come to shake Arafat's hand in the 1990s [video of White House event], because by then Arafat had turned peacemaker."
Arafat: "As I told you, this is my destiny."
Donvan: "By this time he'd renounced violence, recognized Israel's right to exist, agreed to a deal designed to lead to a Palestinian state. It never came to be. A Jewish extremist gunned down Rabin. Arafat paid condolences in person."
Arafat: "I am very sad and very shocked."
Donvan, video of Barak, Clinton and Arafat Camp David: "But efforts to keep the peace process going -- some brokered by Bill Clinton in person -- slowly fell apart."

Arafat's rejection equals just "fell apart"?

-- CBS Evening News. Mark Phillips: "There are as many conflicting versions of Yasser Arafat's birthplace as there are opinions about the man. He was a freedom fighter, who in his ever-present military uniform and kafiyah, was the champion of his down-trodden people. He was a terrorist whose chosen tactics left a trail of innocent blood. He may have embodied the aspirations of the Palestinian people, but by the end, imprisoned in his Ramallah compound, he had become disconnected from his people -- the nominal head of a Palestinian authority known more for cronyism and corruption than for any efficient pursuit of the Palestinian cause."

Phillips at least ran through Arafat's murderous record: "Yasser Arafat's battle in support of that cause had been nothing but consistent, too consistent his critics say. From his formation of the militant fatah wing of the PLO in the 1950s to the present, he had inevitably fallen back on the violent option. From airplane hijackings, to the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics to his losing battles with first the Jordanian then the Israeli military, the PLO became the template for modern terrorism. When he famously appeared at the UN in 1974 to offer, he said, the olive branch in one hand or the gun in the other, it was the gun he chose time after time.
"Faced with stagnation in movement toward Palestinian statehood, he sanctioned the first Intifida. Even after he had shared the Nobel Peace Prize with his sworn Israeli enemies following his official renunciation of terrorism, when the potential country he was being offered was something less than he felt Palestinians could or would accept, he sanctioned the second Intifida, and couldn't, or wouldn't, rein in the suicide bombers who terrorized Israel's cities. The Israelis dismissed him as an unreliable partner and with America's help isolated him. He died with his dream unfulfilled and left behind the worst possible legacy in the Middle Eastern tinderbox -- a political vacuum."

-- NBC Nightly News. Tom Brokaw began: "Good evening. Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader who for so many years seemed to be so indestructible and so much the obstacle to peace in the Middle East is now returning to that embattled region for the final time, for his funeral, burial, and the everlasting question: Is there now new hope? The body of the flamboyant and controversial leader of the Palestinian cause is in Cairo tonight, where the funeral will be held before burial in Ramallah in the West Bank. It's been a long, troubled journey.
"Arafat's life with the Palestinian cause began in earnest when he was 30 in the late '50S. By 1968, he was head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PLO, a dedicated militant who was always in uniform. To his followers, he was the shrewd military and political leader of their cause against the Israelis. To the Israelis, Arafat was the chief terrorist. But he was indestructible, and a force to be reckoned with, and so it came to pass, he stood on the south lawn of the White House, recognizing Israel and shaking hands with Yitzhak Rabin, an old adversary. Rabin, Shimon Peres, and Arafat, shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize. But for Arafat, no peace plan would ever be good enough. The last decade of his life was marked by dozens of Palestinian suicide bombings and dozens of fights with the Israeli army. Arafat will be buried in his Ramallah compound. It's on Palestinian territory in the would-be state this Palestinian survivor failed to achieve."

-- ABC's Good Morning America. The MRC's Jessica Anderson noticed how Diane Sawyer paid tribute to Arafat: "President Bush issued a statement about Yasser Arafat's death, a careful statement, which said a significant moment in Palestinian history, careful because Arafat surely was one of most controversial figures in the world. There may not be any other man in history who better embodies the saying that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. So we're going to take a closer look now at the man called 'father' by the Palestinians; he was synonymous with their struggle."

ABC jumped to a taped piece with Sawyer narrating over matching historic video: "He lived the bulk of his days on earth as a man without a country. His had been stolen, he insisted, stolen by those that denied Palestinians a place of their own. And it was to that place that he devoted most of a remarkable life, taking him from squalid guerilla camps to the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.
"Born in Egypt to Palestinian parents, Arafat was not quite 20 when Israel was founded, sending Palestinians by the thousands into exile as refugees. Before he was 30 he had formed al-Fattah, the first Palestinian guerilla unit to launch an attack on Israel. As the new chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PLO, he settled in Jordan, but was forced to keep moving. After Jordan, to Lebanon, always denying any connection with terrorism, but inevitably identified with every aspect of Palestinian violence. Eventually Israelis and Palestinians began to talk, at first in secret, and then this historic White House handshake in 1993: Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Rabin sealing an agreement for a Palestinian authority in the Gaza strip and in Jericho....[2000 clip of Sawyer with Arafat]....Who he was and what he was depend on perspective. For most Israelis, many Jews, he was a bloody terrorist and nothing more. Yet elsewhere in the world, even among Arabs who questioned his leadership, he was treated as a hero, freedom fighter, revolutionary. A diminutive man who became a larger than life symbol of the Palestinian dream."

Charles Gibson turned to guest George Mitchell. Gibson's first question: "This man was an enigma to some extent. I'm curious what you think we lost last night. Did we lose someone who at his core was still a terrorist or did we lose someone who at his core was a peacemaker?" Mitchell saw a "mixed legacy."

-- CBS's Early Show. Rene Syler declared his terrorism as a fact: "First though, we want to get right to our top story and that is the death of Yasser Arafat. For nearly 40 years he was the face of the Palestinian movement and an enemy of Israel. A master terrorist who later won a Nobel Peace Prize. Arafat will be buried in his West Bank headquarters. CBS News correspondent David Hawkins is live in Ramallah with more. David, good morning."

Hawkins, however, delivered some moral equivalence: "Good morning, Rene. Palestinians woke up today to the news that the only leader most of them have ever known died overnight in a French military hospital from a still undisclosed illness. To some he was the father of the Palestinian cause, to others he was the face of Palestinian terrorism."

Hawkins, the MRC's Brian Boyd observed, proceeded to recount some of Arafat's terrorist record before he concluded: "Although he never achieved his dream of founding an independent Palestinian state, Yasser Arafat died as he lived -- combining wily diplomacy and violence to the very end."

An hour later Harry Smith announced: "A military funeral for Yasser Arafat will be held tomorrow in Cairo. The 75 year old Palestinian leader died early Thursday at a hospital in France. Arafat was a terrorist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. Today, Palestinians took to the streets to mourn. Israeli leaders call his death a turning point in the Middle East."

-- For a good rundown of Arafat's vile history, check Jeff Jacoby's Thursday column on the Boston Globe, "Arafat the Monster." A brief excerpt:

....In a better world, George Bush would not have said, on hearing the first reports that Arafat had died, "God bless his soul."

God bless his soul? What a grotesque idea! Bless the soul of the man who brought modern terrorism to the world? Who sent his agents to slaughter athletes at the Olympics, blow airliners out of the sky, bomb schools and pizzerias, machine-gun passengers in airline terminals? Who lied, cheated, and stole without compunction? Who inculcated the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich? Human beings might stoop to bless a creature so evil -- as indeed Arafat was blessed, with money, deference, even a Nobel Prize -- but God, I am quite sure, will damn him for eternity.

Arafat always inspired flights of nonsense from Western journalists....

END of Excerpt

For Jacoby's November 11 column in full: www.boston.com

NBC Undermines Olbermann, But He Plows
Forward on Vote Fraud

For the fourth straight night in a row on Thursday, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann devoted a significant portion of his Countdown program to more ranting and raving under the "making sure your vote counts" moniker. Earlier on NBC, Tom Brokaw treated as newsworthy how "more than a few people are convinced that their votes didn't count, that the results can't be trusted, and they're having a busy conversation on the Internet in cyberspace." Neither Brokaw nor NBC's Chip Reid, in his subsequent story, mentioned Olbermann's obsession, but Reid, who undermined some of the allegations touted by Olbermann, could have been talking about Olbermann when he concluded that "those explanations are likely to have little affect on the President's Internet critics."

Olbermann on Thursday night forwarded the claim that in New Hampshire, in "all 71 precincts where President Bush improved upon his results from 2000, 73 percent of those used optical scanners" -- a conspiracy which presumes the manufacturers of the machines arranged to have Bush get more votes. But it didn't work out, since Kerry won the Granite State.

Olbermann brought aboard Joe Trippi, Howard Dean's campaign manager, and Olbermann fretted about how the media are not pursuing the theories spouted by left-wing bloggers: "The dynamic is kind of fascinating, too, about the coverage of the questionable events, we'll call it that, in the election. The media do almost nothing initially. The blogs get frenetic. The media do reports but not so much on the election or anything that happened during it but on how frenetic the blogs are. What is next? Do the blogs ultimately push the story into the mainstream? Or does the media push back and send the bloggers into their own community where they ignore the mainstream media?"

-- NBC Nightly News, November 11. Tom Brokaw elevated the baseless Internet rumor-mongering into a legitimate news story: "For most Americans, the presidential election ended last week when President Bush was declared the winner. But more than a few people are convinced that their votes didn't count, that the results can't be trusted, and they're having a busy conversation on the Internet in cyberspace. Do they have a point? We asked NBC's Chip Reid to look into their claims."

Reid outlined the allegations: "President Bush declared victory eight days ago, but in the parallel universe known as the Internet, the presidential campaign is still raging. Web sites hostile to the President claim massive vote fraud, that the election was stolen, that Senator Kerry really won. Presidential candidate Ralph Nader says Republican officials in Ohio skewed the election towards Bush."
Ralph Nader: "It was hijacked from A to Z."
Reid: "Most of the Internet stories focus on the key battleground states of Ohio and Florida. In the Florida Panhandle, they ask, how could Bush have won so big when registered Democrats far outnumber Republicans? In Ohio, they claim a computer glitch gave Bush 4,000 extra votes. In many states, they insist, voters pushed Kerry on touch-screen machines, but the check appeared next to Bush. And what about those early exit polls giving Kerry the lead? They say that means the election was stolen. Convinced? Well, even the Kerry team is not, declaring in a statement today that while they want every vote counted, the outcome of the election is not in doubt."
Doug Chapin, Electionline.org: "No, I don't think this election was stolen."
Reid: "Doug Chapin of the nonpartisan group electionline.org says there were many problems on Election Day, from long lines to malfunctioning machines, but there's no evidence the election was hijacked."
Chapin: "I think these are conspiracy theories. I think they are consistent with the phenomenon we've seen on the Internet in recent years."
Reid: "Where stories are told and repeated, often without being verified. What about those Democratic counties in Florida that voted for Bush? They've been voting Republican for years. And the 4,000 extra Bush votes in Ohio? Officials say it was just one machine, caught and corrected. Vote for Kerry, get Bush? Election experts say it happened both ways. And in most cases, it was voter error. And as for the early exit polls favoring Kerry? They were just that -- early -- and, election officials say, wrong. But those explanations are likely to have little effect on the President's Internet critics. And tonight, some of those critics have indicated they may petition for a recount of the Ohio vote. Chip Reid, NBC News, Washington."

-- MSNBC's Countdown. Despite the rejection of his premise by his colleagues, Olbermann plowed forward, teasing his November 11 show: "Which of these stories will you be talking about tomorrow? 'Recountdown': Third-party candidates try to raise the cash to force second tallies for the presidential votes in Ohio and New Hampshire. And John Kerry's campaign say's it's also looking at Ohio -- not to overturn the outcome, only to verify the voting. Uh-huh...."

Olbermann began, as checked against the closed-captioning by the MRC's Brad Wilmouth: "Good evening. About $193,000 is the margin separating this country from recounts of the presidential election voting in New Hampshire and Ohio. But John Kerry has nothing to do with it. In fact, his lawyers are headed to Ohio to, in essence, prove that President Bush won there. Our fifth story on the Countdown, making sure your vote counts while efforts are also under way to count it and everybody else's twice.
"The Kerry-Edwards part of the story first. Your tax dollars in action, day 10 of the 2004 election irregularities investigations. The Senator's legal counsel for Ohio, Dan Hoffheimer, says some of those election lawyers each side were wielding like switch blades before the election are in Ohio or keeping symbolic watch on Ohio but not to try to get their hands on 20 electoral votes. Quote, 'Our effort is not in any way intended to overturn George Bush's victory in Ohio,' Hoffheimer says, 'and we do not expect to find a pattern of voter fraud.' He says the goal is to assure that the laws are followed during the counting of the provisional, absentee, overseas and regular ballots. But despite all those disclaimers, Kerry's Ohio attorney also refers to the, quote, 'many problems that sullied Ohio's electoral process before and on Election Day.'
"Kerry does not want a recount but has resources to burn. Two other candidates do want one, but they may not have any resources at all. But David Cobb and Michael Badnarik, who between them got 14,355 of Ohio's 2.8 million votes, may still force a recount in that state. Cobb, the Green Party candidate, and Badnarik, his counterpart in the Libertarian Party, today confirmed they intend to file for a recount in the Buckeye State. Their campaigns will have to pay for it in advance working on a premise of $10 per precinct. That would mean raising around $113,000 between now and five days after Ohio's secretary of state, Kenneth Blackwell, certifies the election. Since they will not even start working on the provisional ballots until Saturday, that might give Cobb and Badnarik two weeks to locate the scratch. They say they will try to raise it by other Web sites. They also asked Mr. Blackwell, who doubled as President Bush's campaign leader in Ohio, to recuse himself from a recount. Incidentally, in Ohio, Badnarik got 14,331 votes, and Cobb got 24."
"Ralph Nader got 4,470 votes in New Hampshire. That and $2 will get him a gallon of gas if he's lucky. But that and a check now for $2,000 and some sort of binding promise to pay additional costs later will get him a recount in the Granite State where, incidentally, John Kerry won. The Nader campaign confirming this afternoon that the check was being sent to Concord today. They've even already picked out the 11 specific wards they wanted recounted. Those wards, chosen with the help of a Michigan computer programmer and self-described math geek named Ida Briggs, did a study comparing totals from the current election with results from 2000, largely centered in urban areas, in the southeast corner of the state. All those precincts registered a significant bounce for Mr. Bush, anywhere from 7 to 12 points. All of those precincts using optical scanners made by Diebold or Sequoia Voting Systems. And according to Miss Briggs, if you look at all 71 precincts where President Bush improved upon his results from 2000, 73 percent of those used optical scanners. A reminder here that Mr. Bush lost the state of New Hampshire this time around. Nevertheless, after the ballots that were fed into the optical scanners are recounted by hand at a cost of perhaps $80,000, Miss Briggs and the Nader campaign will crunch the numbers again to see if there are any discrepancies."

Olbermann: "To reality check both the possible recounts and what the Kerry-Edwards legal team is or isn't doing in Ohio, I'm joined by John McCormick, Chicago Tribune reporter who's been following the story of the voting mechanics in these elections. ... Is this trying to have your cake and eat it, too, on behalf of the Kerry campaign, kind of a vetting, a recount or a challenge of some sort without really running a risk of suffering the potential political blowback?"
John McCormick, Chicago Tribune: "I haven't talked to anybody in the Kerry camp today, but, I think there is kind of a fine line here. You don't want to be seen as a sore loser. And yet, you know, John Edwards came out on election night, and one of the first things he said is we want to make sure that all of the votes are counted. And, you know, we all know that elections are pretty messy business. Not a lot of attention was paid to this stuff before the 2000 election and how close that one was. But, you know, as people geared up for this election, everybody knew that it was going to be lawyered to death. You know, when I was in Ohio before the election, you know, literally, hundreds of lawyers were there watching."
Olbermann: "And now they may have something to do. And you talk of a fine line, and speaking of a fine line, if what they're saying is not a cover for a recount, if the premise is exactly as Mr. Hoffheimer put it, which was to increase, not diminish the public's confidence in our election laws, in that sense, has not Senator Kerry put himself in a rather odd position spending his campaign's money to double-check the fact that President Bush was reelected?"
McCormick: "Well, I suppose, but, you know, both campaigns geared up for this. They had a legal and accounting funds where they raised millions of dollars in preparation should a recount be necessary. So they have the money in place...."
Olbermann: "It looks like as if there will be at least a partial recount in New Hampshire. At least there's the chance of one in Ohio. And they all would be sponsored by three non-mainstream candidates. If there is a recount in Ohio, how would that impact either Senator Kerry or the remnants of his campaign? Would it impact them?"
McCormick: "Well, again, I don't think, you know, if he wants to run for President again in '08, and there's some speculation that he does, we, you know, obviously, it's too soon to tell if he'll really do that, but you don't want to be viewed as a sore loser...."

Olbermann: "All of this carries auditors, if you will, for Ohio, the Libertarian-Green Party bid to recount there, the Nader negotiations in New Hampshire, may be entirely new to you. Not if you're on the Internet. Once again, the amorphous world of ether and blogs seems to have pointed mainstream politics in this country in at least a slightly different direction. Who better to analyze that than MSNBC's own Joe Trippi, former manager of Howard Dean's presidential campaign, author of 'The Revolution Will not be Televised,' 'Democracy of the Internet,' and 'The Overthrow of Everything,' and Mr. Web around these parts. Joe, good evening."
Joe Trippi, MSNBC political analyst: "Good evening, Keith."
Olbermann: "Simply put, is the roar on the Internet about Ohio the reason that the Kerry folks have sort of side-stepped back into that state now?"
Trippi: "I don't think there's any question about it, I mean, I think they were willing to walk away from it on election night. I think they wouldn't be sending anybody on this mission unless, except for the fact that the blogosphere went out, grabbed this story. And, you know, it was something that we were seeing all day at MSNBC, citizen journalists were commenting on our blog of problems that they were seeing in Ohio. We have the Make Your [Vote Count] project that NBC was running, has 2000 recorded complaints from Ohio. So these complaints were out there, but it was the blogosphere that picked them up, ran with them. And then, Bloggerman, yourself, reported it. And it's, and I think it sort of got another one of those stories that jumped in the mainstream media. And now all these campaigns are reacting to it, and I think even using it as a valid excuse to go in and see what's there and try to, you know, at least count every vote and make sure that some of this stuff didn't happen."
Olbermann: "Kind of a passport into the prospects of a recount in Ohio."
Trippi: "Exactly."
Olbermann: "The dynamic is kind of fascinating, too, about the coverage of the questionable events, we'll call it that, in the election. The media do almost nothing initially. The blogs get frenetic. The media do reports but not so much on the election or anything that happened during it but on how frenetic the blogs are. What is next? Do the blogs ultimately push the story into the mainstream? Or does the media push back and send the bloggers into their own community where they ignore the mainstream media?"
Trippi: "No, you know what I think happens? I mean, the blogs really reflect, that frenzy reflects a lot of concern out there among a lot of Americans....The blogs are just really churning what a lot of Americans are worried about, what concerns they really have. And then once those concerns are exposed, the people who are supposed to go in and make sure everything happened right, the campaigns have a responsibility to do that. The press has a responsibility to do that. We're doing it now."
Olbermann: "And it's not just a question of stolen. It could mean altered by static cling, is perfectly nightmarish enough."

In four nights of trying to prove nefarious election day voting events led to Bush's victory, Thursday was certainly Olbermann's weakest night.

CyberAlert items from this week on Olbermann's obsession:

-- For the third straight night on Wednesday, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann devoted a major portion of his show to exaggerating the importance of a few voting glitches and to complaining about the lack of media attention to the subject: "Why has the cascade of irregularities around this country occurred virtually in a news blackout?" He noted how CNN had picked up on the subject and Newsweek's Jonathan Alter bucked up Olbermann: "Don't give up on it, Keith." Olbermann highlighted how Ralph Nader "said the national vote had made this country, quote, 'the laughing stock of the world,' that, quote, 'this election is not over,' that the outcome in Ohio had been, quote, 'hijacked from A to Z,' and that John Kerry should demand a recount there." Olbermann ruminated about the possibility which is "more heart-stopping still, one that threatens the democracy in the way 100 terrorist rings could not, that the President or the district 90 dog catcher or other Republicans or other Democrats were elected because a series of insufficiently sophisticated, insufficiently secure computer voting machines were affected by bad design, bad use, damp ballots, power surges, and/or static cling." Later, on CNN's NewsNight, anchor Aaron Brown took the allegations seriously. www.mediaresearch.org

-- The November 10 CyberAlert item on Olbermann: For the second straight night on Tuesday, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann devoted more than a fourth of his 8pm EST Countdown show to indulging his fantasies about how a few supposed voting glitches, none of which would alter the results, justify contesting the presidential vote outcome. He complained about "the deafening silence from the mainstream media on this story" and denounced his journalistic colleagues as "wimps" for not joining his cause. Olbermann trumpeted how he received 7,500 e-mails about his Monday show with "the ratio of positive to negative holding at about 22 to 1," a sign his program is mainly watched by conspiracy-minded blue-staters. Interviewing Craig Crawford, Olbermann yearned: "Is there in Ohio a case for a recount, a formal contesting, something?" And he wondered: "Did ultimately, did John Kerry concede too soon?" Turning to law professor Jonathan Turley, Olbermann wanted to know: "Do you think there is enough evidence to justify legal action, recount, a contested election?" Meanwhile, on Tuesday's World News Tonight, ABC's Jake Tapper took on and undermined Olbermann's premise. See: www.mediaresearch.org

-- November 9 CyberAlert item on Olbermann: With "Did Your Vote Count? The Plot Thickens" as his on-screen header, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Monday night led his Countdown program with more than 15 straight minutes of paranoid and meaningless claims about voting irregularities in states won by President Bush. Olbermann contended: "There is a small but blood curdling group of reports of voting irregularities and possible fraud -- principally in Ohio and Florida." He began with how, citing "homeland security," one of Ohio's 88 counties blocked media observers from watching the vote-counting, a county whose importance he elevated: "Warren County's polls were among the last in Ohio to close, thus among the last to report and thus among the votes that clinched the state and the election for President Bush." Moving on to Florida, Olbermann recited the results in five small counties "with decided Democratic margins" which used optical scan devices and "suddenly voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Bush." In fact, all the counties Olbermann listed voted for Bush in 2000. Olbermann asked left-wing Democratic Congressman John Conyers: "Do you think that what happened...altered the outcome of the presidential election?" www.mediaresearch.org

CNN's Brown Snidely Hints Purple Hearts
in Iraq Will Be Suspect

Aaron Brown's snide shot of the day. Upon pointing out a photo in Stars and Stripes of some soldiers in Iraq who had earned Purple Hearts, during his Wednesday night "Morning Papers" segment on CNN's NewsNight, Brown sarcastically remarked: "Some day, one of them will run for President and someone will say they didn't earn the Purple Heart. Welcome to America."

Brown began his November 10 look at the Thursday newspapers, a segment in which he holds up big veloxes of front pages:
"Okay, time to do morning papers. I've been on an airplane today. I have no voice left. What is it about airplanes that does that? I don't know. Stars and Stripes starts it off: 'U.S. Troops Control Most of Fallujah,' the headline. 'U.S. Officials Believe Most Insurgents Have Fled the City.' Look at this picture here, if you can. 'Troops' Bravery Honored in Iraq.' These are all Purple Heart winners. Some day, one of them will run for President and someone will say they didn't earn the Purple Heart. Welcome to America."

The photo Brown showcased was of a row of soldiers. For the story with the picture: www.estripes.com

The caption: "Nine soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division's 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment received Purple Hearts Tuesday at Forward Operating Base MacKenzie, Iraq, for injuries received this year during Operation Iraqi Freedom."

To see the front page of the November Stars and Stripes, look for the European or Middle East editions which carried the photo: www.estripes.osd.mil

The MRC's Ken Shepherd used our DVR system to grab a still shot of Brown pointing to the photo and that will be placed in the posted version of this CyberAlert item.

-- Brent Baker