Manufacturing Consent: Exhibit n

From the Kucinich campaign website.... I added the links. You can watch the debate here.

Note that Gravel, who, despite his good offices re: the Pentagon Papers, is making a buffoon of himself (and thus of any truly liberal opposition to the other candidates), is allowed a lot of time to be laughed at and generally make an ass of himself.

Clearly, Kucinich is too serious a threat. Meanwhile, ABC is making sure that the American people don't get to make their own choice about Kucinich. That's called "democracy."



Kucinich campaign is awaiting ABC News explanations for its actions


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The Kucinich campaign is still awaiting an official response from ABC News about the unexplained -- some have charged "inexplicable" -- way in which the network has handled its post-debate online coverage of Ohio Congressman and Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich over the past few days.

Among the "outrages" that have energized tens of thousands of Kucinich supporters -- and even non-supporters -- thousands of whom have flooded the ABC News website and other online news sites with comments of protest:

  • Congressman Kucinich was apparently deliberately cropped out of a "Politics Page" [since removed; Kucinich is shown in a different shot now. Not worthy of a close-up, though.] photo of the candidates.
  • Sometime Monday afternoon, after Congressman Kucinich took a commanding lead in ABC's own on-line "Who won the Democratic debate" survey, the survey was dropped from prominence on the website.
  • ABC News has not officially reported the results of its online survey.
  • After the results of that survey showed Congressman Kucinich winning handily, ABC News, sometime Monday afternoon, replaced the original survey with a second survey asking "Who is winning the Democratic debate?"
  • During the early voting Monday afternoon and evening, U.S. Senator Barack Obama was in the lead. By sometime late Monday or early Tuesday morning, Congressman Kucinich regained the lead by a wide margin in this second survey.
  • Sometime Tuesday morning, ABC News apparently dropped the second survey from prominence or killed it entirely. [It's back up; linked above; Kucinich is winning again.]
  • AND, as every viewer of the nationally televised Sunday Presidential forum is aware, Congressman Kucinich was not given an opportunity to answer a question from moderator George Stephanopoulos until 28 minutes into the program.

The campaign submitted objections and inquiries to ABC News representatives on Monday and Tuesday. ABC News representatives have failed to respond -- or even acknowledge -- those objections and inquiries.

Stayed tuned for further details.