New Yorker: O'Keefe Doesn't Prove Anything

Alex Koppelman of The New Yorker has gone to bat for Eric Holder and the Justice Department, rallying to liberal banner emblazoned with the slogan “It Doesn’t Matter! Nothing To See Here!”

Koppelman, like his colleague earlier today at New York Magazine, is claiming that it’s no big deal that a random person can walk into a polling place and obtain a ballot for a different registered voter. Koppelman wants hard evidence that such a problem is widespread. Otherwise, he says, it’s irrelevant:

Shapiro and O’Keefe and the rest don’t know when voter fraud takes place, if indeed it does, because they don’t do the work necessary to find out. O’Keefe may be lionized as an investigative journalist, but he’s not one, and he never has been. He takes the easy, flashy way out: his videos don’t prove that malfeasance is happening; they prove that it could, maybe.

The videos, of course, never purport to show that voter fraud is happening. We leave that to videos like this one; or perhaps reports like this; or maybe even accounts like this.

Supposed absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. That’s one of the first rules of basic logic. And it clearly escaped Mr. Koppelman – especially since there’s plenty of evidence of voter fraud.

Beyond that, it is inane to suggest that journalism is “easy” and “flashy” if it shows holes in the system rather than exploitation of those holes. I recall no such qualms from Koppelman when reporters tested the Transportation Security Administration at airports or when the government did the same. I recall no such hesitations with regard to the FBI arresting a terrorist whom they had supplied with fake explosives.

Discovering holes in the system and making the public aware of them is a key function of journalism. It is the job of the legislators to write laws that make it more difficult for things like voter fraud to take place; making their constituents aware of the problem is a necessary prerequisite to such action.

Attacking journalists for reporting problems with the voter fraud detection system is just another symptom that there’s something very wrong with those in the mainstream media who expend efforts covering for the Obama administration rather than covering the news.