If the media wants the president to stop calling them “fake news,” they should stop reporting news that is fake.
This usually applies to a battle of tweets between the president and his allies versus the media that populates the elite-media bubble in Washington D.C. and New York City. Occasionally, but more often than it should, local journalists want to get in on the act.
The reporting done by the Alabama Media Group’s Lee Roop and Paul Gattis is so bad and so fake that it is surprising that they didn’t bring in a third reporter to screw this story up even more.
The allegations made in this piece are your standard “Evil Republicans don’t want black people to vote” fake news allegations.
Excerpt from the report as follows:
Alabama voting officials have put unfair hurdles in the way of students from Madison County’s two predominantly black universities who want to vote in Tuesday’s election, county officials said this week.
Students registered to vote in good faith, those officials said, but will encounter unexpected road blocks when they go to the polls on Tuesday.
What makes this story worse is the obvious, unvetted, unquestioned, unverified and completely unbelievable allegation that hundreds of students from Huntsville’s two Historically Black Colleges and Universities were turned away at the polls in 2016.
One allegation comes from former Madison County Democratic Party Chairman Tom Ryan.
Excerpt from the report as follows:
“They’ve done this before,” Ryan said. “They did this in the last election, too. The Board of Registrars said they used the wrong address and there were hundreds who were disenfranchised at that point.
“It’s always kind of coincidental, isn’t it, that it’s students and students of color who are always kicked off the rolls for some reason or another,” Ryan said.
Hundreds? From HBCUs? During Donald Trump’s election? In Alabama? The same Alabama that we are told is still the home of George Wallace, Bull Connor, Jim Crow, poll taxes, police using dogs to attack black people and good old Confederate racism?
There is zero evidence for this allegation offered by Ryan, and Roop or Gattis just print it without question because it fits the narrative. There is no prior reporting that backs this up. There is nothing that should lead anyone to believe this actually happened.
They know it and Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill knows it, too. He went on WVNN’s “The Dale Jackson Show” Thursday to discuss the story, which he called “a lie.”
Excerpt from the interview as follows:
Let me tell you why we both know it’s a lie. Not only do we both know it, everybody within the sound of your voice and everybody that reads AL.com or any publication in the nation knows it’s a lie.
Because if you think for one minute that one student, not hundreds, but one student was denied the right to vote at Alabama A&M University in the most controversial presidential election in our lifetime in 2016 and waited until five days before the 2018 gubernatorial general election in 2018 to tell that?
Oh my God, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, you name whoever you can name, Kamala Harris, they all would’ve been down here.
They’d have been screaming. Congressman Lewis, Terri Sewell, they’d have been screaming and shouting and hollering, and you’re telling me they’re introducing it today?
I’m telling you, it’s a lie
Merrill said has worked tirelessly to register voters, to inform voters of their rights and to get voters to the polls.
In registration numbers, it has worked:
— Alabama has a record 3,457,667 registered voters.
— 93 percent of Alabamians are registered to vote.
— 96 percent of all eligible African-Americans are registered to vote.
— 91 percent of all eligible Caucasians Alabamians are registered to vote.
This hardly seems like a voter suppression scheme.
This is fake news. Shame on everyone involved in this mess and shame on everyone who repeats it.
Listen:
@TheDaleJackson is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts a conservative talk show from 7-11 am weekdays on WVNN
