U.S. Media Ignores Questions on 2004 Election

Public Distrustful of Press Corps as Watchdog on Bush White House

Interview with Robert Parry, award-winning investigative journalist, conducted by Scott Harris

As President Bush reflected on his recent election victory, Republican party officials declared to a divided nation that they saw their narrow electoral win as a "mandate." The president went on to say that he intended to spend the political capital he had earned on Nov. 2nd by advocating legislation to deepen tax cuts and partially privatize Social Security.

But in the aftermath of the closely contested election, disturbing questions are still being asked about GOP voter suppression campaigns and a number of other irregularities in the battleground states of Ohio and Florida. Citizens groups, rather than political parties, have taken the lead in investigating these concerns. But allegations made about flawed electronic voting machines and suspect counting methods, which have led to a state-wide recount in Ohio and a partial recount in New Hampshire, are being virtually ignored by the nation's major corporate media outlets.

Many citizens who have bitter memories of the U.S. press corps' poor performance scrutinizing President Bush's dubious justification for the Iraq war -- and weak coverage of the 2000 presidential election fiasco -- are doubtful that the U.S. media will aggressively examine the 2004 vote or other major political issues confronting the nation. Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with award-winning investigative journalist Robert Parry, who broke key elements of the Iran Contra scandal while working with the Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. Parry considers the forces which constrain the American media from more assertively holding those in power accountable for their actions.

Robert Parry is winner of the George Polk award for national reporting. He is the author of "Secrecy and Privilege, Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq." Read his columns online at www.consortiumnews.com


For more information visit these websites: www.freepress.org and www.votersunite.org

"Ohio Presidential Results to be Challenged," by Steven Rosenfeld, FreePress.org, Nov. 20, 2004

Black Box Voting www.blackboxvoting.org

www.ustogether.org

votecobb.org

www.commoncause.org

www.thealliancefordemocracy.org

www.helpamericarecount.org

"How They Could Steal The Election This Time," by Ronnie Dugger, The Nation, July 29, 2004

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