Did TV Networks try to help Gore Steal the Election?

Great Debates
1

The Florida Panhandle is in the Central time zone. Its polls closed at 8:00 Eastern Time, while the rest of the state closed at 7:00. Beginning at 7:00 on election day, newcasters began reporting that the Florida polls were all closed, thus discouraging voters in the Panhandle, who are 2 to 1 Republican. Statistical studies estimate that W lost 7,500 to 10,000 net votes as a result.

BTW Katherine Harris, who was later attacked for partisanship and ridiculed for wearing a lot of makeup, had sent a special warning to the TV networks about the split closing times. They all ignored it. (Not that a professional news organization should need help to find out what time a state’s polls close!)

A vote difference of 7500 - 10,000 would have decided Florida without the entire recount drama. So, did intentional or unintentional misfeasance by the TV networks almost undo a fair election?

2

See: http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010507-275233.htm

3

Anyone who makes a significant decision based on what network news tells him/her is the truth deserves the problems that he/she will run into as a result.

I assume this is another attack on the Monolithic Liberal Media Cartel. I am skeptical of a newspaper article publicizing a staff member’s book which cites precisely one example as “proof” of the problem – I feel sorry for Mr. Glass, but see the paragraph above.

No matter the accuracy of the material presented in the OP and the link provided, the answer is “No.” Because the 2000 election was not conducted fairly. This is one of the few things that staunch Democrats and staunch Republicans can agree on. Both major candidates engaged in post-balloting legal maneuvers which they were legally entitled to do but which were IMHO unethical and which cast a pall of unfairness over the results – no matter which way they would have ended up going.

I note that Florida has reformed its voting procedures by law, and provided for consistent and mandatory recounts as appropriate to close races.

I believe this horse is quite moribund, and needs no further assaulting.

4

I suppose, it’s not much difference as Fox News calling the ELECTION for Bush, and being on the phone with Jeb the whole time…weren’t they?

5

I do believe that most network reporters are liberals, and that the great majority were pulling for Gore. But I can’t see ANY way you can argue that their coverage of election returns in FLorida were calculated to benefit Gore.

Look, this was a screwy election, in every imaginable way! There’s no way around that. No matter who won, the “loser” would have every right to feel cheated.

Up front, I’m a right-winger who supported Bush. It just so happens, I do NOT support the electoral college system. If I had my way, the winner would be determined by the popular vote… which means (unfortunately)< this time, Al Gore would have won.

But under the rules as they exist, electoral votes are all-important. And it all came down to Florida. And there was ABSOLUTELY NO GOOD WAY to determine the winner in Florida.

The race in Florida was close. So close that any number of things could have shifted the result one way or another.

Do I agree that many people who THOUGHT they were voting for Gore voted for Buchana? Sure. COmmon sense and gut instinct tells us that (even Buchanan admitted as much). But even if we accept that, what are we supposed to DO about that? Vote counters aren’t psychic. They CAN’T and SHOULDN’T be interpreting ballots, trying to infer the voter’s intent.

Under the circumstances, I think the right result was reached. But it’s NOT a result that should make any of us ecstatic. I sure wasn’t. And if Democrats (or theire media friends) still feel cheated and angry, and still feel like arguing about it… I can’t say I blame them.

6

astorian, that was the most objective statement I’ve read about the circumstances of the election. I knew that Gore lost Florida when I heard about the influx of 3000 accidental votes for Buchanan.

7

Not to rehash the theft of the election again (ref. numerous threads over the last 7 months), but:

(1) No network called Florida until about 10 minutes were left before closing in the Panhandle. Is that enough time to have affected anyone’s vote?

(2) Has the notably-objective Washington Times, or anyone else, found any voter in the Panhandle who admits to having been discouraged from voting per the described scenario? I thought not.

8

who stayed home when he heard that Gore had won (and only 10 min before the polls closed too!).

As long as we’re beating dead horses, I read in the Orlando Sintinel today that aparently some of the counties ‘fixed up’ votes on the day of the election so that they would pass through the machines.

The story implies that this helped Bush more than Gore, but doesn’t give any hard numbers.

tj

9

My error, they did find one in that article. Only 10,999 more to go …

10

Given that it’s now well-documented that George Bush’s first cousin was working at Fox News during the night of the election results and made the decision to call Florida for Bush (thus prompting the other news stations to play catch-up to Fox’s “breaking” story), isn’t the title of this thread erroneous?

11

There’s one problem with the hypothesis that the networks were trying to tilt the elction for Gore. In making the call of Florida for Gore early, they followed a perfectly normal procedure for election-night reporting. There was nothing unusual about the use of exit polls to declare a winner in a state before all of the votes were in; that’s the way that it’s always been done. Of course they were wrong in this particular instance. No one ever claimed that exit polling was an exact science, and in an election this close, it’s hardly surprising that mistakes happened. Many news organizations at times on election night put New Mexico in the Bush column and declared Republican Slade Gorton the winner of the Washington Senate race, but both results were erroneous. Does this prove that the media was trying to favor Republicans? No. It just proves that mistakes can happen.

Since Republicans keep saying that we should “get over” the election results and stop talking about it, maybe they should stop beating this particular dead horse.

12

Since it turned out that (in all likelihood) more people in Florida actually voted for Gore than Bush, it’s not surprising that the exit polls actually reflected that.

The exit polls reflect who people believed they voted for, but because of the Butterfly ballot, the ballots themselves didn’t reflect that.

So for your thesis to be true. The networks would have to have known that the butterfly ballot was going to take the victory from Gore in order for their reporting of the exit polls to have any effect on the election.

You can’t seriously be saying that, can you?

tj

13

I sincerely appreciate all your responses. However, the issue I wanted to address was that the major networks reported the wrong closing time for polls in the FL Panhandle. As a rsult, many citizens didn’t vote, because the media was telling them that their polss were closed. It’s a heavily Republican area.

Questions I wonder about –

  1. How could the media not find out what time the polls closed?

  2. Why did they ignore the warning from Katherine Harris of this very point?

  3. After the first mistaken report, FOX stopped rdporting that all Florida polls were closed, but other stations repeated their mistake over and over. Why didn’t any other TV station correct their error?

14

According to the linked article, it seems that the first announcement that the polls had closed occurred only 11 minutes before the actual closing. Having made the goof, how many harried production managers actually received word that they had broadcast an error in the final 11 minutes?

As to the “warning” from Harris: did Harris call up each anchor or network CEO and make sure they understood? Or did one of her assistants send a letter to one of their assistants (or a generic letter to the “news department”) and hope that all would be well.

Was it a dumb mistake? Yep. It seems hardly deliberate. Had it been deliberate, would it not have made more sense to broadcast at 6:30 local time (or, better, 6:10) instead of waiting until 6:49?

According to the quoted polling company, 28,050 people suddenly abandoned their right to vote on the basis of a news broadcast that predicted a win based on exit polls.

Twenty-Eight THOUSAND people were lined up at their front doors or racing madly through the streets of Pensacola and all suddenly turned around and went home based on a single news report–which should have been immediately questioned by all those “better informed” Republicans? (Yes, the other broadcast outlets repeated the error, but each of them had to have heard it first on NBC, scribbled it down or fed it into a newsprompter, and gotten it wedged into the ongoing reports from other feeds. This means that only those watching NBC were deterred for 11 minutes and anyone else (even if it was two thirds of the electorate) were “notified” 10, 9, 8, or fewer minutes before they had to be at the polls.)

The unfortunate (and dimwitted) Mr. Glass notwithstanding, I find that to be less than probable. It would be interesting to see the actual statements made by the sources who were paraphrased as having agreed that the (11 minute) premature announcement actually cost Bush 11,000 or 8,000 votes. Was this determined by polling people about their voting after the fact? During the whole brouhaha in Southern Florida when it would make people like Glass feel good to think that they were “robbed”?

Do the actual vote results show a lower voter turnout (especially at the end of the day) than had been seen in other elections? Are there any stories (other than the unsubstantiated claim that Mr. Glass “learned”) of masses of people deserting the polling lines in frustration as they heard the news? In the states where I have voted, radios and TVs are not permitted to be turned on near the polls. Is Florida different?

Where are Safire and Krauthammer and Will on this story? Finding the only support for it in the Washington Times (I have seen it nowhere else) does not bode well for its link to reality, either.

15

tomndebb answered these questions with his usual efficiency. There are a few things I wish to add.

  1. Florida, with two closing times, is pretty unique situation, and I can see that little quirk being overlooked. Given all the incorrect information published by the media (check out http://www.snopes.com for all the urban legends reported as fact in various newspapers, etc.), it takes a conspiracy theorist of the highest order to decide that this piece of bad information was intended to throw the election.

  2. How many people, 11 minutes before the polls close, are watching television? There are either already in line at the polls, or in their car on the way to the polls.

  3. In 1980, the networks called the election for Reagan hours before the polls closed on the west coast, thus purportedly discouraging hundreds of thousands from voting. The networks can’t seem to decide which way to throw an election - to the GOP or to the dems.

  4. The networks, by declaring Dubya the winner in the early AM, greatly hurt Gore’s attempts to get a recount/challenge the election. In the public eye, Gore was the sore loser from that point forward, when, as a practical matter, the election was so close that no one could rightfully have been called the winner until (at least) the end of the official recount, as mandated by Florida law. So either the networks tried to throw the election to both candidates at different points, or they just screwed up.

Sua

16

Uh, people live close to 2 different time zones would not be all that confused by such an announcement from the national press. I imagine most of the folks in the panhandle would look at their watches and see the statement as an obvious mistake.

17

I live in Tallahassee and I couldn’t resist going down to the protests at the State Capitol. What amazed me the most was that most Gore supporters were Floridians while most Bush supporters were from out of state. Somebody had bussed a lot of them in and others drove down.

Everyone has the right to protest but the media again did not reflect news and views of the times properly.

I have not met one fellow Floridian who has admitted to voting for Bush except his brother. Leon County is a Democratic stronghold but no one is admitting to being a Republican.

Whereas the original question asks if the media tried to help get Gore elected, I suggest that it was the eaxct opposite. Or, at least, the media did not portray the chaos afterwards accurately. They kept adding fuel to the fire to increase their ratings. Period. I have almost completely stopped watching CNN, MSNBC, FNC since the election.

Harry Browne 2004

18

That didn’t happen until the wee hours, well after poll closing time. It did help create the perception that Bush was the “rightful” winner, and that Gore was just being a sore loser by insisting that the law be followed and the votes be counted.

19

Good for you, Mambo.

One final word on the subject. In California, among voters who voted for either of the major candidates, the split was 44% Bush, 56% Gore. This was exactly or within a couple percentage points of what was predicted by the last series of polls in California prior to the election. So there’s a state where the voters saw the erroneous result about Florida more than two hours before the polls closed, and it still didn’t affect the results significantly.

20

So very, very true.

stoid