₦airaland Forum

“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” – Edmund Burke

You are about to read a true life story that has a great moral lesson on the
need to wait for official declarations before spreading news about victory in
elections.
It happened in the United States of America! Yes – the U.S.A. Everything about
this story has a similitude of Nigeria’s 2015 Presidential election. Sit back and
read the most intriguing piece of political history.

November 3, 1948 – It was an election between incumbent President Harry Truman
and Republican challenger and governor of New York, Thomas Dewey.
Many of America’s major newspapers had predicted a Dewey victory early on in
the campaign. A New York Times article editorialized that “if Truman is
nominated, he will be forced to wage the loneliest campaign in recent history.”
Perhaps not surprisingly then, Truman chose not to use the press as a vehicle for
getting his message across. Instead, in July 1948, he embarked on an ambitious
22,000-mile “whistle stop” railroad and automobile campaign tour. At every
destination, Truman asked crowds to help him keep his job as president. His
eventual success in the election of 1948 has been largely attributed to this direct
interaction with the public and his appeal to the common voters as the political
“underdog.” At the end of one of his campaign speeches, voices in the crowd could
be heard yelling “Give ‘em Hell, Harry!” It didn’t take long for the phrase to
catch on and become Truman’s unofficial campaign slogan.
In a now famous photograph snapped in the early morning hours after the
election, a beaming and bemused Truman is shown holding aloft the Chicago
Tribune issue that had wrongly predicted his political downfall. Truman defeated
Dewey by 114 electoral votes.

“Dewey Defeats Truman” was a famously incorrect banner headline on the front
page of the first edition of the Chicago Tribune on November 3, 1948.
Incumbent United States President Harry S. Truman, who had been expected to
lose to Republican challenger and Governor of New York Thomas E. Dewey in the
1948 presidential race, won the election. A delighted Truman was photographed at
St. Louis Union Station holding a copy of his premature political obituary. Only a
few hundred copies of the paper were published before the Tribune issued a
second edition that backed off from proclaiming a winner.

The headline is a cautionary tale for journalists about the dangers of being first
to break a story without being certain of its accuracy. It is also a caution about
allowing editorial preference to cloud judgment; the Tribune had been strongly
against Truman throughout the campaign.

The story by reporter Arthur Sears Henning also reported Republican control of
the House of Representatives and Senate that would work with President Dewey.
Henning wrote “Dewey and Warren won a sweeping victory in the presidential
election yesterday. The early returns showed the Republican ticket leading
Truman and Vice President Alben W. Barkley pretty consistently in the western
and southern states” and added that “indications were that the complete returns
would disclose that Dewey won the presidency by an overwhelming majority of the
electoral vote.” As it turned out, Truman won the electoral vote by a 303-189
majority over Dewey and Strom Thurmond (though a swing of just a few
thousand votes in Ohio, Illinois, and California would have produced a Dewey
victory), and the Democrats regained control of both the House and the Senate.
Truman was handed a copy of the paper and displayed it to a crowd of well-
wishers from his train in St. Louis, Missouri.
In later years, the publishers of the Tribune were able to laugh about the
blunder.

SOURCES:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Defeats_Truman
http://www.deweydefeatstruman.com/
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/newspaper-mistakenly-declares-dewey-president

bulllshii..t
A very weak argument.
dis ain't 1940's bro nd damn right dis ain't USA.
omo na naija we dey, no dulling. nd if u slack,even ur right wld laugh nd pass u by.

gej can only win via rigging.d social media is d voice nd power of d pple.


GMB,welcome aboard sir.

Apc winning on social media, pdp winning at inec office
Up jonathan
Up transformation

Your life is another person textbook

inspiring stuff, this should make FP in the spirit of one Nigeria.

cc: Seun , lalasticlala

story for the ...........

I'm patiently waiting for the final say from the INEC Chairman and not hearsay, blog say, national dailies say, social media say etc because I don't want an unconfirmed report to give me HBP. God forbid!
But to candid, blood dey rise small small here oo!
Make dem collate the votes from each state make person no how im go be jare!

These announcement of results is what will cause crisis, because when the true results come out, people will feel that the figures were manipulated.
Please pressmen and social media warriors, take it easy with the announcements, wait for INEC

YOU ACTUALLY SAID PREDICTED NOT THAT THEY ARE SEEING THE RESULTS ..........YOU NEED TO SEE THE RESULTS IN 2011 AND TAKE A LOOK AT THE RESULT BY ALL THESE SOCIAL MEDIA IF THEY DIDNT TALLY.............. THEY ARE FROM INEC OFFICE AND JUST DON,T BECAUSE OF SENTIMENT DESTROY OUR BELOVED MEDIA COMPLETELY.......... AT LEAST THEY SERVE HAS OUR SOURCE OF NEWS BEING GOOD OR BAD

bestestgirl:
These announcement of results is what will cause crisis, because when the true results come out, people will feel that the figures were manipulated.
Please pressmen and social media warriors, take it easy with the announcements, wait for INEC

At this rate of inventing results in the social media nobody will win any elections in this country anymore

APC forget PDP reacts but they learn quickly. This nonsense APC is doing will come back to bite them in the guber elections. No be naija we dey?

...back to Nigeria

Elections:
click like if u think buhari will win
click share if u think Jonathan will win

“Those who don’t know history are destined to
repeat it.” – Edmund Burke

Mods.. Oya oooo

Nice incite

bestestgirl:
These announcement of results is what will cause crisis, because when the true results come out, people will feel that the figures were manipulated.
Please pressmen and social media warriors, take it easy with the announcements, wait for INEC

the social media is going to play a major role in how violent free this election will be. A friend showed me a facebook group post where it was posted that Apc has won in 26 states including imo, edo & even cross river state, many people are already commenting on that page, now want do you think will happen if the real inec result says otherwise. We need to be patient, all these false results flying about will do nobody any good.

abbeycial:
bulllshii..t
A very weak argument.
dis ain't 1940's bro nd damn right dis ain't USA.
omo na naija we dey, no dulling. nd if u slack,even ur right wld laugh nd pass u by.

gej can only win via rigging.d social media is d voice nd power of d pple.


GMB,welcome aboard sir.

You are very wrong and you know it. Only 55 million Nigerians out of 177 million population have internet access. Given that 50 million out of the remaining 122 are below voting age, there remains 72 million Nigerians without internet access and these 72 million forms the voting nucleus of Nigeria. You can make all the noise you wanna make online and do all the propaganda that makes you feel happy with yourself; these 72 million wil never know about your propaganda. And to make matters worse for you, they are in the majority.