Why is the Press still embarrassed that they “prematurely” announced that Al Gore would win the last election?
The Press was on the right track. The facts clearly show that more Eligible Citizens voted for (or at least made a reasonable effort to vote for) Al Gore. This even includes the Citizens of the State of Florida.
Bush was given the election on technicals. The Press was right all along, it was the Refs that made the bad call.
It seems to me that if anyone should be embarrassed, it would be a Supreme Court Justice with ties to Bush. Frankly, I doubt this will happen.
If the press should be embarrassed about anything, it should be embarrassed at going from an independent, truth-finding challenger of the status quo into a meekly subservient serf of the nation’s right-wing corporate interests.
Two generations ago, Woodward and Bernstein brought down a President by their relentless search for the truth; now the press is reduced to begging for scraps from a President who can’t go through a press conference unless every question is known in advance.
Another one of these threads. Dude, in less than 72 hours you’ll have plenty to bitch about when Bush wins re-election. You’re bringing up stuff from 4 years ago?
The embarrassment is less about making the call than the pressure to make the call.
It’s a function of the VERY old school ‘be first into print’ concept that led to increased newspaper sales each day. Now that translates into being the first to make a call on election night. Because of that pressure there’s a tendency to cut corners when vetting out information.
I don’t know, but if I forgot that not everyone had finished voting, and had confidently called the election only later to realize my goof had been witnessed by over 200 million people, I might still be embarassed about it too. I’m glad they’re still embarassed - it might keep Tuesday night less of a circus if they’re still smarting from that screw up.
The premise of the OP is wrong in one respect – the press didn’t get the call right. Not because Gore didn’t win the election – he did – but because at the time the call was made, the election was CLEARLY still at issue. The idea is, you make the call when you have a clear winner. They didn’t have clear winner, they weren’t even CLOSE to having a clear winner.
The OTHER embarrassing thing was the way they were gulled by Fox News, who called it for Bush first. The guy who was assigned to decide who to call it for was a cousin or something of – you guess it – George W. Bush.
An embarrassing bit of incompetence and corruption all 'round – the national press SHOULD still be smarting from it. And we should still be suspicious of them because of it.
A newspaper article recently talked about how nobody in the press wanted to be first with their prediction. It said they were embarrassed by the incident. I want to know why they should be.
Do yu think this election will not also be disputed? Can we learn from our mistakes?
First line. Just about every newscaster is saying they won’t call the vote tally early. This came about, in a large part, by News orgs calling FL while the CST part of the state still had its polls open. (The more conservative panhandle) Nothing’s been proven, but it’s been speculated that those people saw FL went Gore and stayed home.
Second line. Will this be disputed?!? You watch the news right? It’s already being disputed. Yeah, we’ll learn. Learn how to cast doubt before the polls ever open. Both sides will work this angle until something better (or God forbid) worse comes along.
My guess is with this election, the news media will actually wait for the results to come in, rather than call it early. Once bit, twice shy. Particularly as this election looks like it will be another close one.
Strange comparison, Dude. If Woodward is your hero, can you tell me why Kerry refused to grant an interview to him?
I wish the press would stop attempting to “project a winner” and simply keep running updates as the results come in. Most Americans who care about the election results are able to count for themselves.