Topic: NewsBusters
(Updated)
In a May 25 NewsBusters post, Tim Graham asserts that the upcoming HBO movie "Recount" "aims to mislead the public into believing Al Gore won the presidency in 2000, when every recount (even the liberal media’s) found otherwise."
In fact, as we've previously noted, the National Opinion Research Center recount, funded by a consortium of news organizations including the Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, found that Gore won Florida in four different counting scenarios.
Graham also suggests that the "Recount" movie has a liberal slant because "liberal media consultants" were hired for their help with the script, among them Jake Tapper, who wrote a book on the 2000 Florida turmoil. But a July 2003 MRC CyberAlert said of the book: "To be fair, Tapper’s book was supposedly also pretty tough on Al Gore." (We've previously noted the MRC's attempts to dismiss Tapper as a liberal.)
UPDATE: Brent Baker gets in on the misleading fun, insisting that "both recounts conducted by major media outlets in 2001 determined George W. Bush would have won anyway" and that anyone who claims otherwise is "re-writing ... history." Baker, unlike Graham, does try to quantify things, claiming that "George W. Bush still would have won under either legally possible recount scenario which could have occurred" and citing a Gore win under "a scenario which never could have occurred." But Baker, like the November 2001 CyberAlert item from which he cribs, never explains how he concluded that the two recount scenarios he cites in which Bush won are the only "legally possible" ones.
