This year, the NPR Election unit is teaming up with the Center for Investigative Reporting to report on the new crop of independent groups. With changes in political strategies and campaign law, they're potentially more important than ever.
But we need your help. Why? Even though NPR and CIR have the best research tools available, many of these groups will use strategies that will be visible only to voters.
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With news organizations chopping budged for investigative reporting, perhaps this is a way to cover private money influencing elections. The two examples given are a bit unbalanced, putting the swift-boating of a presidential candidate against a little known attack against a US representative. Perhaps that is because there is more big secret money injected by the right rich republicans.
I saw a post about this project on TechPresident.com. But, rather than post the one-paragraph blurb about it, I thought I'd link directly to the NPR site. It's a fascinating development in citizen journalism--asking us to do the investigation and research and investigation, and using mass media to verify and publicize our findings. Could move independent media to a whole new level.
This is an advertisement, not journalism. There also is no indication that the groups will deviate from their devotion to the Democratic Party. They could at least have shown balance for 2004 by mentioning Rathergate, in which a fund-raiser for the Democrats got free air time for a fraudulent charge against President Bush which was disproved within hours, yet continued to be promoted for free on TV for several more weeks.
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