FAIR: NY Times killed story on Bush debate cheating (back bulge)

[yurbud]

FAIR.org is right in their assessment that this was a legitimate story since Bush sells himself on his moral values, yet he broke the rules of the debate, and his handlers demanded that he not be shot from behind, apparently so it would be harder to catch him cheating.

Contrast the little to no coverage of this to the Karl Rove orchestrated brouhaha in 2000 when a videotape of Bush's debate practice was sent to Gore.

The press is giving this sorry sack of shit a free ride, and the rest of us are paying the price, in war, lost civil rights, less access to college education, massive debt to pay for his tax cuts for the rich, and if he has his way, the end of a secure old age.

Print journalists who bitch about the decline of newspaper readership should ask themselves if that would change if they did some serious muckraking on the most corrupt and destructive administration in American history instead of cutting and pasting their press releases.

This president has told deliberate lies about the need for war, pressured intelligence agencies to do the same, and even our premiere newspapers can't muster coverage beyond tepid crap about "intelligence failures," in essence, letting the CIA and military take the blame for the Bush administration's lies.

Please take a second to let the editors of the New York Times know that this is newsworthy and that they need to grow some testicles, or just throw in the towel and do front page stories on Michael Jackson or Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt breaking up.

[e-mail]
[e-mail]

The photos from the debate were enhanced by a guy at JPL who does the same thing to photos of Mars that we have all probably seen. Here's his photo of Bush at the debate:

? ?

It's clear even from unenhanced photos that George W. Bush has been wearing some kind of object under his clothing, both during the debates and at other public appearances. The enhancements done by NASA scientist Robert Nelson show a rectangular object with a long "tail"; in some shots a wire leading over Bush's shoulder is visible. This configuration closely resembles a PTT (Push To Talk) receiver with an induction earpiece, a device used by some actors, newscasters and politicians to allow for inaudible voice communication in a public setting. The particular model pictured here (which does not appear to be the exact type Bush wore) was manufactured by Resistance Technology, Inc. of Arden Hills, Minn.

KEY EXCERPTS:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2012

As Extra! went to press, New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent posted a message on his website (12/21/04) confirming that his paper had, in fact, killed a story about the device under George W. Bush’s suit. Here is the text of Okrent’s message:

President Bush and the Jacket Bulge

Online discussion of the famous bulge on President Bush’s back at the first presidential debate hasn’t stopped. One reporter (Dave Lindorff of Salon.com) asserted that the Times had a story in the works about a NASA scientist who had done a careful study of the graphic evidence, but it was spiked by the paper’s top editors sometime during the week before the election. Many readers have asked me for an explanation.

I checked into Lindorff’s assertion, and he’s right. The story’s life at the Times began with a tip from the NASA scientist, Robert Nelson, to reporter Bill Broad. Soon his colleagues on the science desk, John Schwartz and Andrew Revkin, took on the bulk of the reporting. Science editor Laura Chang presented the story at the daily news meeting but, like many other stories, it did not make the cut. According to executive editor Bill Keller, "In the end, nobody, including the scientist who brought it up, could take the story beyond speculation. In the crush of election-finale stories, it died a quiet, unlamented death."

Revkin, for one, wished it had run. Here’s what he told me in an e-mail message:

I can appreciate the broader factors weighing on the paper’s top editors, particularly that close to the election. But personally, I think that Nelson’s assertions did rise above the level of garden-variety speculation, mainly because of who he is. Here was a veteran government scientist, whose decades-long career revolves around interpreting imagery like features of Mars, who decided to say very publicly that, without reservation, he was convinced there was something under a president’s jacket when the White House said there was nothing. He essentially put his hard-won reputation utterly on the line (not to mention his job) in doing so and certainly with little prospect that he might gain something as a result—except, as he put it, his preserved integrity.

Revkin also told me that before Nelson called Broad, he had approached other media outlets as well. None—until Salon—published anything on Nelson’s analysis. "I’d certainly choose opinion over that of a tailor," Revkin concluded, referring to news reports that cited the man who makes the president’s suits. "Hard to believe that so many in the media chose the tailor, even in coverage after the election."
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[KoKo]

1. Can we get this nominated for DU Frontpage?

Can we get a campaign going to contact the NYT's and ask them to release this story which is being held Hostage?

Reading this, there's no other way to explain this. Bush had something under his jacket. We have a right to know what it was. Why is the NYT's sitting on this. The election is over. What is that thing under his jacket and why did he need to have it there. Is it still there?

[Nothing Without Hope]

5. Yes, you're right. This is more about media corruption than the blivet**

And corporate media corruption should be a very high priority for us in the alternative media who are trying to strategize how to get the truth out to the American people before it is entirely too late.

The NYT no longer deserves the trust and respect it once earned. Honest investigative journalism isn't safe under this fascist administration, and the editors of that once-proud newspaper have compliantly rearranged their priorities. It's accomodation and collaboration all the way now. The "bulge" story is just a nice, simple example of how this works day to day. The presidential tailor was quoted as an expert when he was saying nonsense -- because the blivet** & Co. wanted that. A true expert and overwhelming evidence were silenced -- because the truth might embarrass the blivet** & Co.

The corporate media in this country are the major enablers of the criminals in control of the government. We need to brainstorm practical ways we can end-run their lock on public information access and get the truth out.

Nominated for the Home Page.

[bullimiami]

2. my money is where my morals are at

i subscribe to no papers and listen and watch none of the failed once-proud news organizations.
i read and support and listen to those who share my ideals and morality.

[Nothing Without Hope]

3. Yes, the once-mighty NYT reputation has certainly been reduced

for good reasons. I wonder how much of their reasons for being a blivet** propaganda machine are from just generally sucking up to the rich bullies, how much from pay-for-favors like payola or perks including special access, and how much from fear of reprisals. Maybe a bit of all of these. One option I do NOT include is that the NYT editors actually do believe what they oversee being published in their paper. Oh, no, they know exactly what they are doing. The way they only apologize when absolutely forced to, and then keep doing the same things anyway as secretly as possible proves that, as if there were any doubt. So does the abosolute consistency of the bias in the lies and omissions.

Much of the NYT's long success was due to people in the US and around the world respecting the paper for the quality and reliability of its contents. No more. I wonder if they have figured the implications of this into their bottom-line calculation of editorial policy.

Selectively suppressing news can be just as much a propaganda process as writing a story that is deliberately biased. Both ways, the truth is lost and the power of the criminal cartel in Washington is entrenched just that much more.

What a shame. In all senses.

[PA Democrat]

4. I nominate this for the front page

I'm sick and tired of the corporate media burying stories that make Bush look bad.

[Us vs Them]

6. The bulge will not go away

ftp://

This was a photo taken directly from AP with no retouching.

[Nothing Without Hope]

7. your picture link isn't working for me

I have an old Mac, but I normally have no problems with picture files. You might want to recheck the link.

[yurbud]

14. Cheney's bulge is his remaining humanity trying to escape

[TexasLawyer]

8. Don't overllook the possibility that this was a medical device

PHOTOS Show George W. Bush Seriously Ill Physically
by C L Hallmark Tuesday December 21, 2004 at 07:58 PM


George W. Bush apparently is wearing a medical device for "persons at risk of cardiac arrest." It is a LifeVest wearable defibrillator. He started using it sometime after his January 2002 fainting spell, which was attributed to choking. Based on photos showing him wearing the device, one can conclude the fainting was due to atrial fibrillation (AF), which his father also had. His father's AF was caused by Graves' hyperthyroidism, which his mother also has. Bush likely has AF and less likely Graves', based on his family history and symptoms. The AF may have caused a stroke or TIA (mini-stroke), of which physicians watching the debates detected symptoms. Observers have noted psychological symptoms consistent with this and with Wernicke-Korsakoff disease.

http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2004/12/35839_comment.php

Lots of pictures at link. REALLY Interesting!

[yurbud]

10. This would be AT LEAST as newsworthy as the bug explanation

Didn't we get treated to Ronald Reagan's polyps in the 80s?

And in the 90s, weren't republicans asking to see if Bill Clinton's penis was bent as part of the Paula Jones scam?

Now we can't even find out if our president is a gimp barely hanging on to life?

[TexasLawyer]

12. I Agree

I copied this article for my mother, who lives in Des Moines, IA. Everyone who saw these pages said "Give me that!" and read it and made their own copies. Most of them asked, "Why wasn't this in the newspaper?" Good question!

My mother took the article on a plane ride, and everyone around her asked to borrow it. They were astonished. She said eventually it made its way around the entire coach section. (She didn't get it back, so she had me make more copies). Again, the big question from EVERYONE was, "Why isn't this on the news!" "Why isn't this in the papers?" Again, good question!

I've been making copies of the article and leaving it "around" for people to look at (Just left one in the Dr.s waiting room this morning, in fact).

I think this is an easy way to make the case to people that mainstream media is not giving people the whole story, and in fact is withholding, or greatly downplaying, some vitally important information.

[yurbud]

15. Texas is probably a good place to leave it laying around too.

[Chi]

18. This tidbit would seem to support the non-medical version...

http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/08/bulge/
Bush's mystery bulge

"Suggestions that Bush may have using this technique stem from a D-day event in France, when a CNN broadcast appeared to pick up -- and broadcast to surprised viewers -- the sound of another voice seemingly reading Bush his lines, after which Bush repeated them. Danny Schechter, who operates the news site MediaChannel.org, and who has been doing some investigating into the wired-Bush rumors himself, said the Bush campaign has been worried of late about others picking up their radio frequencies -- notably during the Republican Convention on the day of Bush's appearance. "They had a frequency specialist stop me and ask about the frequency of my camera," Schechter said. "The Democrats weren't doing that at their convention."

[indepat]

9. Hopefully the leader of the free world is not just a puppet on a string

who says what he is told to say.

[yurbud]

11. my letter to NY Times editors

I just added one paragraph to my original post before I sent it to them:

You might also take your role as an informal but crucial check and balance in our government seriously. You are smart people, and you know what Bush is. Do you really want your picture and name and the name of the New York Times to be linked to Bush in the history books?

[TexasLawyer]

13. Wow, I love that! n/t

[KoKo]

17. Okay...I hope we get a good DU E-Mail Blast going to expose this...thanks

for posting...maybe it gives us all inspiration to take the NYT's to the mat in this. They have this story held HOSTAGE! Let's free it...!

[tandem5]

16. kick nt