An Excellent Letter to the Editor on Proof for Vote Fraud Stories

From Democratic Underground (which seems to have incredible voting threads of late):

I thought this letter deserved it's own post. There have been several posts by DUers who have received replies from media that the fraud story is not legitimate and not newsworthy because we have no conclusive proof (I know, we disagree, but that's their tagline). This DUer, a GREAT newbie, suggested this response.

Original thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

nmoliver (38 posts)
I'd reply like this:

Proof? What was the proof of Whitewater wrongdoing? What was the proof of WMD's in Iraq? What was the proof that Saddam Hussein was tied to 9/11? What was your proof that the Paula Jones case had credibility or validity? Did you keep these stories out of your newspaper until you had tried the case and proved it? What proof did you have that the election was stolen in Ukraine? The exit polls? Yeah? Did you keep that from your newspaper because you didn't see the proof?

You don't need to have proof of wrongdoing to report that thousands of people are actively questioning the legitimacy of this election, that there have been congressional hearings with testimony and witnesses and statistics and data, that there have been FOIA lawsuits to get audit logs of the computers, that Mitofsky has refused to hand over his raw data but has admitted that he changed his methodology late on November 2 to conform to the tallies.

You are not the judge and jury of the news, passing verdicts on it before it makes the front page. You are obligated to report the sides of the story, the controversies, so that your readers know that these differences of opinion are ripping at the fabric of our society.

What you are confessing here is that you are setting yourself up as censors, suppressing information about vital controversies going on in our society because you already have your opinion about it.

My friends, that is not your job.

Right on. I also think there would be money to make on this as well.