The
Washington Post has now picked up on the story that is dominating the liberal blogosphere.
What the authors of this piece don't focus on is the fact that it wasn't just the bloggers who called the election for Kerry on the basis of the exit polls. It was everybody. This is documented
on the web. There are various sites up ridiculing the way the mainstream media is "blaming the bloggers", when we know for a fact that CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post (not to mention everybody else, including the all-knowing "markets"---not least the spot market for oil contracts---and both campaigns), all were calling it for Kerry.
This is now in the realm of admitted fact, as Mystery Pollster's website *documents* in his "Blaming the Bloggers" diary.
He comments:
Some say it was just the talking heads on the networks that fell into this trap. We now know the editors at the nation's most prestigious newspapers -- relying not on leaks but on data received via paid subscription -- acted on the belief Kerry would win. The managing editor of the Washington Post said his paper "had to scramble to make last-minute changes to an article analyzing why voters voted the way they did that was based in part on the poll." An article by Jim Rutenberg said the New York Times also had to pull "an analytical piece about the vote based in part on the Election Day survey" from late editions of the paper.
Calculations are being done, by the way, regarding the probability that Bush would have outperformed the exit polling to the degree he supposedly did.
Is it 187 million to 1?
Or is it 250 million to 1?
The MSM has long had its head up its own rear-end, I'm afraid. Let's not forget that the NYT and the WP have both already had to apologize publicly to their readers for drinking the Administration's kool-aid regarding the 'justification' for the Iraq war.
As for the networks and cable news, anybody who watches them and reads the political blogosphere will know that there is no contest as regards journalistic quality or integrity. The bloggers win hands down, which is why the MSM is so quick to pooh-pooh, to condescend, and to patronize.
But, the cable news people are now having to cover the bloggers' stories (thank you, Keith Olbermann). The party Conventions both had bloggers accredited as journalists. The bloggers are coming, and because they don't have to do the 'he said/she said/we don't know who's telling the truth/now a message from our sponsors' crap that the TV people are hooked on, nor do they have to pretend that the Administration or the Pentagon or the Justice Dept are not full of cow dung, they get the job done.
And if it eventually comes out that the vote in this election was hacked, expect to read it on a blog somewhere near you before it hits the MSM.