Astounding Bias Example From The Seattle Times

Here's one to remember for a long, long time: the day the Seattle Times tried to undercut solid, irrefutable evidence that fraud tainted the 2004 Washington State Gubernatorial election, by focusing instead on the actions of a lobbyist.

The goods have been delivered, the evidence of a stolen election, and the Times is fully aware of it. Names on the GOP's newly released list are tied to instances of illegal voting.

Earlier, the two stories below were reversed on the Seattle Times website main page:

Trickery used to check voters' signatures

Democrats liken the methods used by a builders group to a form of identity theft.

GOP delivers "felon voters" list

The earlier, reversed, placement was fair and correct. The real story is that Republicans delivered the hard evidence required of them by the Chelan County judge to prove that illegal votes were cast. A Times analysis backed up the GOP's assertions. That's what should have remained the headline, as it's an enormous revelation.

The other story involves a building industry lobbyist whose group funded a trick questionnaire designed to capture the real signatures of disputed voters to see if comparisons would reveal fraud. It was a very questionable activity, even if the purpose was to answer questions about vote irregularities and I can see why recipients would be upset. It's not something we want to see repeated.

But he was one man, acting as part of the Building Industry Association, not in any official partisan capacity. How could it be more important than new evidence of election thievery?

What's more important, rampant vote fraud that changed the outcome of a gubernatorial election, or a loose cannon, unaffiliated with the GOP, who took it upon himself to discover whether improper votes were cast?

So what happened? Did a shift change at the Times web desk lead to the two stories being flip-flopped on the site? Did an editor decide later the lobbying story was more important? Readers deserve to know why the coverage was slanted in this way.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's website shows even more blatant bias, with the only coverage of the GOP's hand over of the list a story about Democrats scolding them for "smearing the voters."

Update: it only gets worse this morning. The Times site focuses only on Democrats slamming Republicans over their list on not on the real story, the data itself:

Errors in GOP's list of illegal votes, Dems say

Democrats say Republicans are wrong about an alleged vote from the grave and six people accused of voting twice.

Democratic chief says Karl Rove lurks behind GOP suit

We knew this was going to happen as soon as the GOP submitted their evidence, that Democrats were just waiting to pounce on it.

But why should anyone believe the Dems (and polls in the state show a majority generally don't on this issue) with their knee-jerk assertions that Republicans are wrong? Have they shown a pattern of honesty through this fiasco?

Certainly we don't expect the Times to ignore Dem allegations, the problem is that the entire focus of coverage is on discrediting the Republicans, rather than a balanced presentation.