Election story hushed

The Hartford Courant

The count is over, and the results are, well, the results are …

Several of the nation’s biggest and most-respected news gathering organizations have spent almost a year trying to figure out what exactly happened in Florida last Election Day, and finally, they’re this close to knowing. But they’ve decided not to tell anyone, not yet anyway.

Clearly, last month’s attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., and America’s newly joined war on terrorism have changed the priorities of every newsroom in the country. But to the exclusion of any other news? To the exclusion of a study of ballots that The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, The Wall Street Journal and others deemed worthy of a seven-figure budget and months of research?

"They’ve put the whole project on indefinite hold," said Julie Antelman, spokeswoman for the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, which has conducted the ballot count for the news organizations.

Antelman said that although the research group’s work is complete, the news consortium has asked that the data be withheld rather than turned over to the various media outlets for analysis. Which means that if there is any real news to come out of the study — Did Al Gore get more votes than George W. Bush? Did Bush actually score a resounding victory? — readers and viewers won’t have it for weeks, if not months.

None of the four largest news organizations in the group was willing to talk about the study, but Antelman said consortium members reasoned that they don’t have the resources to devote to the report in light of terrorism and the fighting in Afghanistan.

Some, though, believe it’s the duty of those at the Post, the Times and others to marshal the staff and time to make a timely report.

"My feeling is that the American people have a right to know who won the last election, terrorist attack or no," said Bill Press, co-host of CNN’s "Crossfire" and former chairman of the California Democratic Party.

"Out of decency, I believe it might have been appropriate to sit on it for a couple of weeks or a month (after Sept. 11), but there’s certainly no need to sit on it any longer," Press said. "It really doesn’t make much difference, because George W. Bush is the president and no matter what the consortium found he will still be president until November 2004. It’s not going to cause an interregnum or an impeachment. It simply will answer a big question. I’d like to know. I think most Americans would like to know."

Web sites and online chat rooms have been rife with speculation that the consortium has embargoed any reporting on the study out of a sense of patriotic duty, a fear that publishing or airing potentially controversial findings could undermine the authority of the commander in chief at a crucial moment in the country’s history.

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