Citizens in the rain
Maybe we can't have election reform without media reform
By ROBERT C. KOEHLERTribune Media Services

“Where there is a free press the governors must live in constant awe of the opinions of the governed.” — Lord Macaulay (one of many stirring quotes on the sacred role of the Fourth Estate adorning the lobby of the Chicago Tribune)My fantasy of the mainstream media actually doing their job, and living up to the words they carve in marble to describe their own importance, is an 80-point (Terri Schiavo- or even Pope John Paul II-sized) headline running across the top of tomorrow’s paper: ELECTION RESULTS IN DOUBT.

That would stop a few hearts. But the nation’s major newspapers, even as they struggle with declining readership, have no intention of being quite that relevant to their readers — no intention, it appears, even to begin the process of looking into the hornets’ nest of vote fraud allegations abuzz in meticulously researched reports on electronic voting (see uscountvotes.org) or the voluminous Conyers Report on what happened in Ohio on Nov. 2 (see

truthout.org/Conyersreport.pdf).

Isn’t our democracy at stake? Doesn’t that matter?

http://www.commonwonders.com/

this is the article that got killed>>

http://www.commonwonders.com/archives/col290.htm

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Once again I quote exit-poll analyst Jonathan Simon: “When the autopsy of our democracy is performed, it is my belief that media silence will be given as the primary cause of death.”