Author name: davidswanson

Lies, Damn Lies, and Polls

By David Swanson

David W. Moore, who worked for Gallup for 13 years as managing editor and senior editor of the Gallup Poll, has a new book out denouncing most polls by Gallup or anyone else as useless, and explaining that this became obvious to him when he first began work at Gallup, raising the obvious question of why he stuck around for 13 years. The explanation seems to be that he was trying to fix the problem, and one of the motivations for the book seems to be that he believes he still can read more

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Media Criticism of Hate Speech Is Long Overdue

By David Swanson

I get the impression that a great many people are upset by all the news about McCain-Palin supporters who believe Obama is an Arab, a Muslim, a terrorist, and a baby killer. I find it the most encouraging thing that’s happened in eight years.

Why? Because these sorts of lies and fear-mongering are nothing new. What’s new is that the U.S. corporate media is covering them. The most unaccountable, antidemocratic communications cartel outside of China has decided to read more

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When the Corporate Media Apologizes

By David Swanson

Of the hundreds of corporate and independent media outlets that falsely claimed this week that ABC News had broken a story about NSA spying that I broke at AfterDowningStreet over a year ago, only the guys at McClatchy (formerly Knight Ridder, the same people who have done better reporting on Iraq than any other corporate journalists) have had the decency to put out a correction, and only the Sacramento Bee has posted (though probably not printed) it:

“A McClatchy Newspapers read more

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Chicago ACORN Is Braver and Better Than McCain

By David Swanson

The McCain-Palin campaign is running an advertisement “accusing ” Barack Obama of once training ACORN members in Chicago. Obama should be proud of that. I’ve done it myself and am proud of it. I trained Chicago ACORN members in how to talk to the media about the wonderful work they do.

What sort of work? Chicago ACORN has worked to improve local schools, reducing class sizes, providing teachers with mentors and assistants. Chicago ACORN has worked to prevent read more

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That's Religulous

By David Swanson

According to an Associated Press story on Friday, more than a half-million people have toured the creationism museum in Kentucky since it opened in May 2007. However, at least one of those people was there to make fun of it with a video camera.

In fact, a lot of what Bill Maher’s new film, “Religulous”, does is make fun of people. But by no means does Maher single out fringe religious believers. He interviews one of the few top scientists in the world who read more

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ACORN Is Not the Nut Here

By David Swanson

From 2000 to 2003 I was the communications coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. I don’t know whether to be sorry or relieved that I don’t have my old job now.

ACORN has been through some scandals of its own making, but it is currently all over the news because of a pair of absolutely fraudulent and nationally coordinated attacks.

One of these attacks involves accusations of voter fraud. But, of course, “voter fraud” read more

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Re: The Truth About ACORN's Voter Registration Drive

To: Interested Parties
From: Bertha Lewis and Steve Kest
Date: October 9, 2008
Re: The Truth About ACORN’s Voter Registration Drive

Election Day is less than a month away, and our efforts to make sure that low-income and minority voters have a voice and vote on November 4th are in full swing. Unfortunately, just as we’ve seen in previous election cycles, the more success we have in empowering these voters, the more attacks we have to fend off from partisan forces making unfounded accusations read more

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Does Justin Rood Hate Bloggers?

By David Swanson

I think that’s a fair question. When Rood worked for TPMMuckraker he complained to CBS News about the life of a blogger.

When he got hired by the Disney Corporation (ABC News) he begin tackling such tasks as burying a story of war lies and war crimes in order to blog about phone sex.

Now he’s added a followup to the original story that still fails to note that I blogged the full story over a year ago, and still fails to tell most of the story.

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It's the War Crimes, Mickey

By David Swanson

1. WMD Lies

Adrienne Kinne describes an incident just prior to the invasion of Iraq in which a fax came into her office at Fort Gordon in Georgia that purported to provide information on the location of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The fax came from the Iraqi National Congress, a group opposed to Saddam Hussein and favoring an invasion. The fax contained types of information that required that it be translated and transmitted to President Bush within 15 minutes. But Kinne read more

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