F911 - I never knew Fox News "called Florida for Bush 1st" vs the others..

[cthrumatrix]

And how the guy who called it for Fox News was related to Bush....and then all the other "news networks" changed their mind. You could see the conspiracy developing.

FWIW - The theatre in Tampa last nigh was sold out (two screens). My compliment to Moore for taking soo much information and "connecting the dots" so that perhaps others (who are less informed) could follow.

The right movie...with the right message.

[qwertyMike]

1. The media let the US down

they are "wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie(s)"

Robert Burns

[cthrumatrix]

2. Let us down is an "understatement"...where is the examination of Fox

for that "call"..what infor did they have. Three other networks had called Florida in Gore's column.

I think it's deeper. To this day, Fox is a RW outlet. They helped overthrow our election.

[Stephanie]

3. Cousin John Ellis - Did you know Jeb is short for John Ellis Bush?

First reported in The New Yorker, but I can't find that article. It was an item in Talk of the Town.

http://dir.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/15/ellis/index.html

Fox guarding the henhouse

By hiring George Bush's cousin to run a crucial part of its election coverage, the right-wing Fox Network hits a new low in conflict of interest.

By Eric Boehlert
- - - - - - - - - -

November 15, 2000 | Why didn't the Fox News Channel hire George Will to man its Election Night Decision Desk? Or Peggy Noonan or William Safire? Hell, why not just go right to the source and hire George W. Bush himself?

These aren't rhetorical questions. Because Fox has made it perfectly clear that it sees nothing wrong with hiring an active George Bush partisan -- who also just happens to be his cousin -- to run a crucial part of its election desk.

John Ellis, a cousin of Bush, helped make the decision to finally (and erroneously) call Florida for Bush in the wee hours of Election Night. The call, the first by any network, created the false impression that Bush had won the general election. Ever since, the Bush camp has been playing the "we won" card; Fox's call made it a participant in the election, not merely an observer.

But the fact that it was a close relative of one of the candidates who helped make the call doesn't trouble Rupert Murdoch's right-wing cable network in the least. To the rest of the journalistic community, it may represent a new low in conflict of interest, but to Fox, hiring a man who recently wrote "I am loyal to my cousin, Governor George Bush of Texas. I put that loyalty ahead of my loyalty to anyone else outside my immediate family" is sound editorial policy. The only thing that troubles Fox is that Ellis, a vocal Clinton and Gore critic, violated company policy by swapping proprietary information with cousins George and Jeb (that stands for John Ellis Bush) in phone conversations on Election Night.

In an interview with the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, Ellis bragged about how he spent much of Election Night on the phone with his cousins talking strategies and exit-polling. Mayer deftly lets Ellis hang himself with his own self-important words: "At 2 a.m. Ellis called his cousins and told them, 'Our projection shows that it is statistically impossible for Gore to win Florida.' It was just the three of us guys handing the phone back and forth -- me with the numbers, one of them a governor, the other the president-elect. Now, that was cool."

<more>