Fair and balanced coverage of the economy by The Miami Herald? ... by gimleteye

The Miami Herald has a partnership with the St. Pete Times. But the Herald didn't even mention, today, the St. Pete Times story that broke yesterday: a potential Republican about-face on awful voter suppression legislation moving through the Florida legislature. The Palm Beach Post editorial, 'Defeat this attack on voters', shows what a timely response by a newspaper's editorial board looks like (reprinted, below).

Is there anything right, with the Herald? The Herald hand-wringing is on the front page of the editorial section of the Sunday paper.

Today, the Miami Herald ombudsman writes "Recent economy stories have carried hopeful tone'. The editorial examines the question, whether the Herald is contributing to the recession, or, under-reporting it. The loudest protests against Herald coverage are "local business people". Although the Herald doesn't get any closer to identifying its critics, I can guess who they are: advertisers in the real estate section of the newspaper mainly connected to the supply chain of condos and production home builders.

Their view was expressed, unchallenged, in the Miami Herald editorial page at the height of the boom in May, 2005 by former Latin Builder Association president, Willy Bermello, "Lately," Bermello wrote with bravado, "There has been more written about the "condo bubble" than the weapons of mass destruction during the Iraq war. There is a relationship in both phenomena: If you say it often enough, you actually start believing it, and soon enough you're on your way toward a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Bermello is on the same team as former US Senator and McCain advisor Phil Gramm, who called the economic trouble that overwhelmed the Republican Congressional majority and White House; a "mental recession." Why this point of view has any credence at all in the Herald publishing and editorial suites is a mystery.

Trillions of dollars are being spent-- guaranteed by US taxpayers--to clean up the mess caused by misguided and misdirected policies that even to this day have the Florida legislature wrapped up in useless knots.

Today's charm offensive on the economy-- belied by statistics continuing to point downward, if at a slightly slower pace-- is being puffed up by the mainstream media. The best place to view the new message framing is on network news, where the sound bites are polished like real gold and not the fool's version.

The Herald ombudsman makes the case that the Herald coverage of the economy is fair and balanced and carries a hopeful tone. But to decide the debate-- is the Herald too tough or not, on the economy-- readers should to ask for an answer to the following question: while the housing bubble was expanding far, far beyond any historical trends, how many Miami Herald reports investigated, questioned or even reported the local, political origin of the housing bust-- including the ascension of Jeb Bush to governor in 1998-- and of the proliferation of laws intended to suppress civic participation in development and zoning; of rock mines, of farmland, wetlands and watersheds? Do a search for interviews in the Herald with civic activists whose complaints were drowned out by the Latin Builders and the South Florida Builders and their lobbyists and hired guns on the city and county commission: see how many you can find. I'll save you the time: there are none.

You don't have to sift through today's Herald stories, like a medieval monk trying to count angels on the head of a pin, for an answer. Bermello ended his May, 2005 editorial: "The bubble is not latex but stainless steel." No amount of wishful thinking, laws, or pressure on the Herald is going to bring luster back to that fool's gold. So the Herald, even in its weakened financial state, might consider giving the public what the public deserves to know: how profits were privatized and risks socialized-- and still are-- by commandeering infrastructure, public investment, and government in service of a narrow group of Republicans-- mostly connected to real estate development and land speculation-- aiming to suppress voters and democracy in order to keep their iron-tight grip on the State of Florida.



Defeat this attack on voters

Palm Beach Post Editorial

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Last week, with just a few days left in the session, Republican legislative leaders proposed a terrible election "reform" bill that came with no public comment or staff analysis.

On Thursday, House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Delray Beach, said that Republican leaders might resist the temptation to ram the legislation through both houses. If they back off, it's because they got caught.

What's bad

The legislation came late, with no advance notice.
The legislation contains none of the reforms elections groups seek.
The legislation would make it harder to register voters and would discriminate against some voters.


The outcry over the GOP's sore-loser bill could be heard all over the state. It angered elections supervisors, nonpartisan elections groups and civil rights groups, whose lists of needed elections reforms were ignored. House Bill 7149 and Senate Bill 956 wouldn't enhance voters' rights; they would weaken those rights. Senior citizens who rely on identification cards issued by community associations would have to get a different kind of ID card to vote. The bills would add more confusion to Election Day by ending a decades-old practice that allows a voter to file a change of address form at the polls.

The bills attack grass-roots groups that lead mass voter registration drives, which usually benefit Democrats. Behind the move is anger at the Association of Communities Organized for Reform Now, the liberal group accused by many Republicans - but not Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning - of fraud while signing up more than 1 million new voters nationwide before the November election in which President Obama carried Florida. Instead of 10 days to submit registrations, the House bill would allow two. Groups like ACORN would have to register. Fines would increase tenfold. "Those fines can put organizations like ours out of business," said Pamela Goodman, past president of the nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Palm Beach County.

The bills would make it harder to collect signatures for petitions to change the state constitution. The Republican leadership doesn't like citizen efforts such as the Hometown Democracy proposal that would limit growth and an effort that would require fairer legislative districts. New barriers would require signature gatherers to register and allow challenges to signatures over even the most minute registration flaw. Signature gatherers couldn't be paid on a per-signature basis.

Even the scaled-down legislation contains plenty to dislike. It would limit petition drives to two years, instead of four. It would relax campaign financing rules by letting legislative leaders control "leadership" accounts to curry favors with members.

Senate Majority Leader Alex Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, argued that the bills are meant to eliminate voter fraud. The best example of voter fraud occurred in Miami-Dade County in 1997 and involved absentee ballots. These bills do nothing to fix problems with absentee ballots, where failure to check a box or sign in the right place can disqualify a voter. They do nothing to expand early voting, which Gov. Crist extended last fall when lines got long.

These dangerous bills may or may not be withdrawn during the session's final week. If they survive, Gov. Crist should declare in advance that he would veto them. They are not about election reform. They are about voter suppression.