ARTICLE CRITIQUE
Response to New York Times "Why Russians Ignore Ballot Fraud" by Clifford J. Levy, October 25, 2009
by Gordon Hahn
The following New York Times article is correct only in its main point: It is true that the pro-Kremlin United Russia’s victory in Russia’s local elections (winning 60 percent of seats overall in hundreds of local mayoral and council elections, including the Moscow city council election) was exaggerated in the final results by the unfair playing field, the party’s access to ‘administrative resources, and various methods of ballot stuffing and vote count fraud. Indeed, the last three sentences of the article relate an experience that I myself witnessed in the 2004 presidential elections. Beyond the obvious and relatively belabored point of dishonest Russian elections, the NYT’s and author’s oversimplifications about the electoral and political system and their extreme prejudices about Russia and Russians taint the article. It is yet another U.S. mainstream media article, masked as ‘news reporting’, functioning as biased opinion and providing no alternative points of view on the debatable points. In short, it is a U.S. mainstream media classic.
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