More small-scale local coverage came from outlets like the online newsrooms Arlington Now and Arlington Patch. They offered the basics—links to the video, assemblages of quotes from the usual suspects, new developments like the opening of a police investigation—but in general did less than they might have to advance or contextualize the story.
Arlington Patch did offer a more expansive look at the police investigation, though, and gave readers food for thought with a link to an interesting Los Angeles Times column by Jon Healey. The core of Healey’s take on the Moran video was this:
It’s damning, no question about it. Recognizing as much, Moran resigned from his father’s campaign seemingly within minutes of the video’s release on YouTube.
It does not, however, prove anything about the sort of in-person voter fraud that Republicans are so worked up about. In fact, it makes a pretty good case that you’d be daft to attempt it.
Healey’s take is clear-eyed both about Moran’s behavior and about how provocateurs like O’Keefe play the game and work to create news coverage that amplifies their message. (Closer to home, columnist Jeff Schapiro of the Richmond Times-Dispatch also had some astute thoughts on the “fraud” theme.) That’s an important mix, and a useful model to reporters and commentators alike. The Moran and Small cases were two skirmishes; a larger battle may still be coming. As they cover that story, journalists here in Virginia have an obligation to make sure the electoral machinery is protecting every citizen’s vote—and at the same time a responsibility not to get spun by the partisans, and to keep things in perspective.
Wow, how did you do that report on Strategic Allied Consulting without mentioning the name Nathan Sproul?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/us/politics/nathan-sproul-a-republican-operative-long-trailed-by-voter-fraud-claims.html?pagewanted=all
"The voter registration fraud allegations against Mr. Sproul’s companies seem to fit a pattern.
In Nevada, a complaint filed last month with the secretary of state’s office alleged that a woman, Cathy Sue Yancey, was told to tear up a form in which she registered as a Democrat and fill out another one without marking her party affiliation..
The election forms were traced to a Sproul operation. Similar allegations prompted an investigation by the Oregon Department of Justice in 2004.
In that case, a couple told the police in Roseburg that they had been approached by a woman outside a Walmart who asked them to register to vote. The husband, John Gomez, filled out a card registering as a Republican. His wife, Katheline, registered as a Democrat.
About a month later, Mr. Gomez received a ballot in the mail, but his wife did not, the Oregon authorities said. Her registration form seemed to have evaporated. Investigators determined that the woman who solicited the couple had been paid by Sproul & Associates."
http://www.alternet.org/story/20194/republican_dirty_tricks
"Sproul's dirty tricks may have finally caught up with him, though far from his stomping grounds in Arizona. In Oregon, Sproul's firm is being investigated by the state attorney general and could face a class-C felony, punishable by five years in jail, for allegedly altering and destroying voter registration forms. And in Nevada, state election officials have just launched an investigation into whether Sproul's Voters Outreach of America destroyed the registration forms of exclusively Democratic voters."
As for the Moran stuff? Typical 'both sides do it' false equivalence.
#1 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 1 Nov 2012 at 01:23 PM
I was wondering how grudging CJR would be in acknowledging the effectiveness of O'Keefe's latest sting. You came through.
ABC News used to put John Quinones in charge of going out to 'conservative' venues (NASCAR races, i.e.) and rying to provoke oridnary people, not the children of Congressmen or NPR functionaries, into making 'bigoted' statements which ABC News could then trumpet on one of its 'newsmagazines'. This stuff is mainly intended to stir up 'identity politics' activists, an important constituency of the Democratic Party, with the side effect of making the usual urban and campus-based demographic (the chattering class base) continue feeling superior to the masses. If CJR can tell me exactly how that is different that what O'Keefe does, if less successful, I'd like to hear it. You can't so you won't. Everyone's a journalist of some sort in the age of YouTube.
Because O'Keefe is 'right-wing', CJR cannot bring itself to acknowledge his effectiveness as the kind of guerrilla journalist that used to be an aspiration of the 'alternative' press. (The latter get taken up by the establishment press pretty easily, one notes.) If O'Keefe had been 'left-wing', he would have been hired to work for one of the networks by now, and would be a folk hero to CJR staffers.
#2 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Thu 1 Nov 2012 at 04:57 PM