Letter from the Editor (Daniel Okrent of the NYTimes) [View All]

I received an email response from Daniel Okrent's assistant Arthur Sorvino from the New York Times, regarding a call to action I made to many journalists last week. Here's the article he points me to, which doesn't say much, but does give us some attention in the media.

http://forums.nytimes.com/top/opinion/readersopinions/forums/thepubliceditor/danielokrent/index.html?oref=regi

>>dokrent - 5:40 PM ET November 21, 2004 (#35 of 35)

>>The Times and Covering Allegations of Election Fraud

>>Sorry to have been neglecting this spot for so long; I could give you a list of excuses, but none of them is especially good.

>>Now, though, my mailbox has begun to overflow with criticisms of The Times for not looking more deeply into allegations of large-scale vote fraud in Ohio and Florida, a story (if true) that no one can ignore. In some of these messages, writers say that "now that the theft of the election has been proven ...," The Times must reveal this to the wider world.

>>Were the assertion even nearly so, I would do more than recommend that The Times reveal it — I’d be demanding it publicly, loudly and frequently. But the evidence I have seen to date proves nothing, other than that there was a certain amount of error in certain counties, and an aggressive effort by some partisans in some areas to challenge some likely Democratic voters. To my knowledge, no one in the Kerry campaign’s vast on-the-ground operation, or in its armies of well-situated lawyers, has made the argument that what happened in Ohio (or Florida) could have changed the result of the election. Similar views were explained in http://w/2004/11/12/politics/12theory.html>"Vote Fraud Theories, Spread By Blogs, Are Quickly Buried," by Tom Zeller (Nov. 12).

>>And more, I expect, will be explored and explained in future articles if meaningful allegations can indeed be established as facts. Both Matthew Purdy, the head of The Times’s investigative unit, and Rick Berke, the paper’s Washington editor, assure me that reporters will continue to look into the issue. I’m confident that if they find something, they’ll publish it. A good investigative reporter (much less a whole staff of them) turning away from a story like this one — if true — would be like a flower turning away from the sun. Careers are made by stories that detail massive election fraud.

>>But: the operative words here are if true. Wishing doesn’t make it so. Although it would probably pain him to have someone from The Times touting his work, David Corn of The Nation, in a recent column, offers plenty of reason to examine the allegations before I, or anyone else, should leap to give them credence. You can find Corn’s column http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041129&s=corn>here.

I appreciate them addressing our concerns. And include their email here, in case we want to thank them. And maybe supply them with more information...

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