From: Jasper
Date: 11/28/00
Time: 8:19:17 PM
Dear ATC
It may seem that I never have anything good to say about NPR's reporting. However, the letters of outrage you are accustomed to getting from me are a poor indication of what I think of you. The only reason you get those letters is because I know that you are the best of the best. Most of the brightest people I know listen to you regularly and you almost always do your best to get the story right. That is to say, I rarely have a beef with you considering the enormous number of stories you cover whether I agree with you or not in what you choose to explore and what you chose to ignore. I know that you have to make choices, you have to meet deadlines and you have to meet standards of operation and listener expectation that don't always lend themselves to an exploration of the issues I think are important.
There is always room for honest disagreement. That's why I've been holding my fire on your coverage of the Florida election certification for so long. You are still the best of the best, but in this case that's not enough.
Right now the question of whether or not the 537 votes that Bush was ahead by when the recounting stopped make him the winner, boils down to the Democrats saying, “Do not!” and the Republicans countering with, “Do, too!” Actually, it was the Republicans who started with “We win!” and the Democrats who countered with, “Did not!” but “Do not/ Do, too” sounded better.
Now and then NPR makes the same choice, picking style or convenience over substance when the substance you eschew makes a huge difference in public opinion. In this case I’m talking about the power of first impression, thus the power of the spin-doctors that gave the issue in question the first spin. Wasn’t it your duty to challenge the validity of the first spin no matter how much criticism you were bound to get for appearing to favor the opposition? No matter how the case is decided in the courts the media’s decision not to do so is going to give the first spin-doctor’s off the blocks the last word in framing the issue for all future discussion of the issue.
To be as clear as I can about this, you must understand that the parties are interchangeable as far as the principle is concerned. If Gore had been certified the winner based on a margin of .006 of one percent, you can bet your boots that the Democrats would be arguing “Did, too” and the Republicans would by arguing “did not.” The essential point is; they are meaningless arguments. In the real world, where the margin of error is at least a tenth of a percent, .006 is zero.
If you really want to know what the winning margin of 537 votes mean in a universe of 6 million, doesn't it make sense to ask a run-of-the-mill statistician rather than a bevy high-powered lawyers and prestigious professor of law? Where you have testable propositions (i.e., the machines were inaccurate, the voters screwed up or chose not to vote for President, etc.) doesn’t it make sense to test the propositions? Doesn’t it make sense to talk to engineers and experts in ergonomics and to poll the voters in the districts in question?
For the election officials’ part, wouldn’t it have made a hell of a lot more sense to respond to an unprecedented situation with an unprecedented solution that puts the voters rather than the lawyers, the politicians the journalists and the spin-doctors first? That’s not a testable proposition, but I do think it’s a good question that deserves an answer from the best of the best. –Jasper
http://www.smartfellowspress.com