Every election season, a debate over a journalistic October surprise takes place. Four years ago, a television station in Portland, Me., reported five days before the presidential election that George
W. Bush had been arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol back in 1976. In the California gubernatorial election last year, The Los Angeles Times published the accounts of 16 women who said
that they had been sexually mistreated and humiliated by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the first of the articles running five days before the vote. Last Monday, The New York Times and CBS News reported that
the Iraqi interim government had warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives were missing from the Qaqaa munitions facility
in Iraq.
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Read the whole story at The New York Times, November 1, 2004
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