Many media outlets made an early call for Gore in Florida, then later calling too close to call. Some supporters are claiming that this kind of reporting could discourage Bush supporters …perhaps keeping voters out west from voting for Bush…
comments?
The Florida call was a debacle. There is no way the media should have called it if they weren’t sure. Notice how they held off on several Bush sho-ins. Ohio, for instance. Also, the first call on several southern states, including VA, NC, and AL was “too close to call.” They ended up getting them right, of course, and it didn’t take them too long, but it strikes me funny that Florida would go so fast into the Gore column.
Oh, oh, CO coming in for Bush. Back to the TV…
Dumbasses…
I do not know if you were looking at the websites, but Gore hap about 44%, Bush had about 50%. I thought that there was some sort of mistake somewhere with updating the state-by-state breakdown.
Nope.
Give the talking heads a break, they are after all, talking heads.
BTW, Fox acutally did pretty well in impartial reporting and even, gasp, held off on declaring a few states. Their excuse for Florida was that everybody else was doing it, so they reluctantly went along with it.
One last side, I hate all of these idiatoic coincidences “pointed out” by the media, i.e., Delaware has never failed to predict since 1952, etc.
God, those piss me off.
Alright, done ranting.
This was intentional, but not because the media particularly wanted to screw any candidate; they wanted to screw their competition.
One network (CBS seemed to be them this evening) will get a reputation as being the earliest to make calls. More people will watch that network. Someone got a bit trigger-happy, jumped the gun, and the rest of the networks all had to follow suit, lest they REALLY be behind.
Notice they were all VERY CAREFUL to not make predictions after that, even when it seemed obvious that Florida was going to Bush.
Yer pal,
Satan
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Yeah, I noticed that one of the networks called Nevada at leat an hour after another (I only watched ABC and CNN, but I was flipping between them so much I forget who was trailing whom).
Other races, too, seemed to be called later than was necessary. Better to be gun-shy than jump the gun a la FL.
BIG serving of crow for the networks.
I guess we can now ask “did the ‘media’ screw Gore in Florida, too?”!
You mean by declaring a winner with only 98% of the vote counted and the polls long closed everywhere? Don’t think it hurt the Gore campaign any.
Satan said:
And, as we see, what “seems” obvious often isn’t.
Jeff Greenfield was talking with Don Imus on MSNBC this morning, and he said that some media outlets called Florida for Gore while only about 3/4 of the polls in the state were closed. To me, this is irresponsible behavior. You shouldn’t call a state while the polls are still open.
If so, it may be because the part of Florida south of Alabama is in Central Time, while the rest of the state is in Eastern Time. Question: Do the polls in Florida close at 7PM local time, or at 7PM EST and 6PM CST?
I don’t know about the closing times in Fla, but the Bush campaign’s main complaint was that the call was made while the CST part of Fla was still open.
