I joined Thom Hartmann on his Big Picture TV show last night to discuss The BRAD BLOG’s exclusive report from earlier in the day confirming the Virginia State Attorney General’s newly launched criminal investigation into the 1,500 allegedly fraudulent signatures turned in by the Gingrich Campaign in their failed attempt to be included on the VA GOP Primary ballot…
By the way, since we broke the news yesterday morning, several outlets have picked up and/or confirmed our report. Though, frankly, not as many as one would think given the nature and scope of the story. Certainly not as many who would have picked it up had either the now-defunct ACORN, or any Democrat been accused of doing the very same thing.
Other than our report, Tommy Christopher’s coverage at Mediaite was probably the most detailed (and included both my name and a link to our story), followed by Dan Roem at National Journal (who credits the story to having “broke in the liberal blogosphere” — though at least he included a link here…even though that link was broken when I last checked), then Julian Walker at The Virginia-Pilot (who didn’t bother to credit anybody for the story) and NBC4-Washington who, in their short piece, did manage to mention and link properly to The BRAD BLOG.
There were a few other mentions (Dave Weigel at Slate, for example) but, far and away, the greatest way our stories are spread are by you guys and others spreading the word yourselves through comments at other sites, email, and via Twitter and Reddit. (The comments on the posting at Reddit — where a huge number of folks up-voted the story — were very, um, enlightening, as you’ll see if you bother to read them.)
Of course, Fox “News”, who mentions, actually highlights, every time an ACORN worker is accused of farting over the years (whether they actually farted or not) has yet to say a word about this story. Wonder why.
Just thought you might be interested in how folks sometimes deal — or don’t — with original, exclusive stories that we break here. Sometimes they pick them up, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they offer appropriate credit, quite often they don’t. That, despite the hundreds of stories we’ve broken over the years, with an impeccable record for accuracy and independent verifiability in just about every damned one of them.
Have you requested the DOJ shut down these people who steal your copyrighted material?
In this case it seems pretty clear that Gingrich was the victim, not the perpetrator — though his own folly is also partly to blame.
He relied, not on dedicated volunteers, but on piecework-paid signature collectors… which proved an irresistible temptation to turn in stacks of fake signatures, take the money, and run.
Gingrich didn’t benefit from the easily-exposed fakery, and had no motive to thus shoot himself in the foot (losing his place on the ballot). His money, however, is still in the scammer’s wallet — which is all the scammer cares about.
Raven, I think you are missing part of Brad’s motivation in bringing this up and pointing out Gingrich’s (and others) hypocrisy as outlined in his original story about this in December and repeated in his post yesterday:
For “turning the tables,” a faint smile.
But I think it weakens the credibility of any other accusation, when you see here what seems (on the face of it) to be a serious charge of fraud against Gingrich which neglects the key fact of his victimization.
The underlying humorous or satirical intent might have come through better if this were a more satirical site, or if the post topic itself were more outré (like Alan Grayson’s recent riff on Space Newt, “Drain the Mediterranean!”).
You know, I really hate it when the Acorn people fart.
Brad,
Not getting credit really irks some people, for example Mike “Say My F**king Name” Ruppert.
Justifiably so.
Brad,
I dugg this. There was no digg registered here. Then there was. Then there wasn’t. Then there was. You tell me.
Then I tried to reddit it. Man, I REALLY don’t understand how that place works and it doesn’t appear to have registered. I dunno. I’m trying. I just don’t fucking get these computer world places and their weird instructions. I often end up sayin’, ah fuck ’em. But then I’ll read another thing that you’ve written and wished everyone knew about it. Then I try again. Or put it on my faceboob page, but people generally seem loathe to discuss politics there. Or put it up at okcupid where I have one friend who is hip to the jive and always willing to jump in. That’s one more than the usual at faceboob.
Maybe if I actually get to meet Jeannie Dean this time she can walk me through it in person. I’m sure it’s not hard.
I’ll say it again. You’re fucking perfect for TV. Wish Rachel or Ed or Al or Jon or Stephen would broaden their horizons just enough to get a good look at our Bradmeister and start getting you up on the tube a bit more frequently and to an increasingly wider audience.
David –
Coupla things. Sounds like you might be using the new version of Internet Explorer which (thanks Microsoft!) seems to mess up quite a few things. Among them, the Digg button appears and then doesn’t, at times…Though I’ve also seen that in Firefox, I believe. So may be a Digg prob. Either way, Digg did itself in about a year or so ago when they changed their algorithm in order to, apparently, make themselves irrelevant 🙂
On the other hand, Reddit is still quite relevant and important to upvote. But IE has made that difficult because now, it seems, you can’t actually vote on the page in IE9. You have to hit the “reddit” word (which opens it on a new page, where you can then upvote the story.)
For some reason, it won’t show that you’ve upvoted when you see the button on this page. But, again, that seems to be IE, not Reddit.
They sure do make it hard, eh? But don’t worry, it sounds like you’re doing it right anyway. And yes, it’s very important towards ensuring that MANY more folks see our stories here than might otherwise!
So thanks for hanging in there and trying!
Thanks Brad. I’m using Firefox. Just clicked on the reddit again here for this piece. It takes me to reddit where it shows me the title of this piece of yours and that Orangutan submitted it yesterday. But where do I click on to add my vote? I thought maybe just hitting the reddit did that. I log in to see if that helps or causes some other thing to pop up so I can vote. It doesn’t. There’s an empty comment space. But there are also all these warnings about what you can’t put in the comment space. I’m convinced I’m gonna break at least one of those rules. I put in this comment–Brad Friedman goes over the differences and similarities between the Gingrich campaign’s “voter fraud” and Acorn’s “voter fraud.” Reality based.–I click “save”. I come back here and see if anything changed on the reddit number. It still says “1”.
I go back to reddit. I see my comment there. I see one point next to my comment. I click on some arrows and make that one disappear and reappear. I see a red arrow up by your name which is the first word in the title of the piece. I see a number 1 there. I click on the red arrow and it changes the number to 2. I come back here and the reddit box still says 1. I’ll leave you alone now. I’ll keep trying.
It’s great that the one that doesn’t mean anything anymore is the one that makes it easier to see that your vote has counted…for nothing. Maybe they could hook these systems up to a DRE…
Okay, I went away from Bradblog and came back and now the reddit here says “2” EUREKAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!And I notice that the scorecard at reddit has gone up to 2 also(it probably did when I clicked the red arrow initially, huh?). There now, that wasn’t so hard was it?(Where’s my hammer?) See, Brad? This is how computer stupid I am.
clarification–
No, the scorecard doesn’t go up a number at the reddit page till you go away from it and come back. Just checked by redditing your previous Gingrich registration fraud post. Only the number at the arrow by the title goes up initially. (You and the rest of the internet universe no doubt already knew this.)
@Raven. The fraud was committed by the campaign in submitting the signatures without checking the work of the contractor. ACORN did such a check, and removed fraudulent signatures before submission — and where still crucified by Newt and company. Newt’s campaign failed to do due dilligence, and so they are legally responsible for the fraud.
@Brad, re: coverage of your story. The Stephanie Miller Show (progressive morning radio) teased your story as stay tuned for breaking news, and then announced the story (attributed) during their broadcast.
David –
Think you’re making things a LOT harder than they need to be. All you have to do to upvote the story on Reddit (presuming someone has already submitted it to them), if you’re using Firefox, is to simply click the UP ARROW on the Reddit box at the bottom of the story here at The BRAD BLOG. You never even have to leave the page!
(DIGG is similar, though in that case, it’ll automatically open up another window when you try to vote for it.)