NewsMax.com
Friday, Jan. 5, 2001

In hope of forgiveness by their viewers – and improved ratings – they are holding to their heart lists of penances they promise to perform in mending the ways they report election results.

Even if it means broadcasting the vote totals last among rivals in the cutthroat competitiveness of television news media, they swear they'd rather get it right.

CBS News now says it is quite prepared to take it on the chin and be second – even last – if that's what's required for it to air accurate election results.

In fact, it says, it's ready to promote such journalistic professionalism as a virtue.

Me, too, says NBC News – "being right, not first, is what matters.''

Their conversion comes on the heels of the colossal fiasco they perpetrated on the American people in their haste to get it first in the razor-close presidential contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore.

On the night of the Nov. 7 election, and well into the next morning, network news organizations were spewing forth premature calls, flip-flopping predictions, inaccurate forecasts and, some critics insist, leftist-slanted spins.

For this, they paid a heavy price in the loss of viewer confidence, which in earlier days of television news had been their hallmark of pride.

According to a report by Reuters news service, here are some of the steps the networks are reassuring their viewers they will put in place before the next presidential election:

CBS News

• Support federal legislation requiring a uniform nationwide poll-closing time.

• Project no state's voting results until all its polls have closed.

• Apply higher standards of certainty for calling close races.

• Use more than a single source when checking vote tallies.

• Do a better job of explaining how exit polls work and how projections are made.

• Make it clear when reporting that results are based on "projections" and "estimates."

• Create a new category of "leaning" to indicate when a candidate is ahead.

• Assign a senior news manager to head the network's "decision desk," reporting directly to its news president, and place a correspondent to staff the desk, which will be moved into the television studio.

• Either fix the problems with the accuracy of Voter News Service, the consortium of news organizations formed in 1990 to pool election-night vote projections, or junk it and develop its own, independent service.

NBC News

• Because of increased absentee voting, re-evaluate the way it projects election results.

• Explain better its own methodology and the terms it uses, such as "projection" and "too close to call."

• Use additional sources in reporting vote tabulations.

• Take a hard look at whether VNS standards are stringent enough for accurate projections.

ABC News

• Project state-by-state results only after all of a state's polls have closed.

• Make independent analyses of estimates and projections.

• Yield not to get-it-first pressures from competitors.

Fox News

• Call no races in states where polling places remain open.

• Not renew its contract with VNS until it receives a satisfactory explanation of all that went wrong in VNS projections.

In an 87-page report just issued, CBS says the 2000 election "revealed to the American people what had been a dirty little secret known only to politicians" – that elections "are approximations, prone to human error, mechanical error, confusion and disorganization."

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Presidential Race 2000
Media Bias