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As the country’s election dust begins to settle, the media
has become heavily scrutinized for the role it played in the
2000 elections.
The heads of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, the Associated Press and
Voter News Service appeared before the House Energy and Commerce
Committee last week to testify on why they miscalled winners
through the night, possibly influencing voters where polls
were still open.
While most of the media representatives in attendance admitted
either partially or fully to inappropriate conduct in the
race to first announce the winner, it was mostly agreed that
the problem stemmed from VNS.
VNS, a media consortium that conducts exit polling for networks
and the AP, was admittedly guilty, claiming it underestimated
the number of absentee votes, had difficulties differentiating
between exit polls and actual votes and used "inappropriate"
past voting trends to analyze the evening’s events.
"This
election exposed flaws in the American voting system, imperfections
mirrored in television’s coverage of the election results,"
CBS announced in its report.
The meeting resulted in several networks announcing plans
to change its system of election coverage. CNN made the most
promises, reporting to the public that it will to not call
winners in close elections, use a second source for projections,
not announce winners until all polls are closed and only call
winners after explaining the projection process.
Both CNN and ABC announced support of a uniform national poll-closing
time, an issue that is being heavily lobbied on Capitol Hill.
But as media organizations make promises to fix problems that
resulted from election night, that is only a portion of the
its faults in its election coverage.
Studies being conducted by journalistic organizations such
as the Columbia University’s Project for Excellence in Journalism
are finding vast discrepancies in how each of the candidates
were viewed by the media. The study found the most common
theme in Gore stories was lying, while the media pegged Bush
as "a different kind of Republican."
The idea that Gore was a liar was constant, as stories exaggerated
Gore’s claims on the Internet, Love Story and the Love Canal.
Gore did, in fact, "take the initiative in creating the Internet"
in terms of legislation and did inspire the Love Story as
said by the book’s author Erich Segal. Gore’s statement of
discovering the Love Canal was a misquotation that was later
retracted by the newspapers that published it, according to
the Washington Monthly.
Yet the media failed to draw the same attention to Bush’s
false claims on important policy issues.
In the second debate, Bush said his tax plan would give the
majority of cuts to "people at the bottom of the economic
ladder." The truth, as discovered by Congress’ bipartisan
Joint Committee on Taxation found "the bottom half of the
economic ladder" would actually receive 10 percent of the
cut.
In addition, his support for a patients’ bill of rights largely
disputes his veto of the patients’ bill of rights in the Texas
State Legislature in 1995.
And as more of the media’s faulty practices come to light,
so do those of the states themselves. The country is keeping
a close eye on the government’s election procedures and many
expect plenty of changes in coming years.
While special interest groups lobby Congress for national
election reform, Arkansas is making its own efforts. Arkansas
has more than a dozen bills that address election procedures
in the State Legislature that are expected to be placed in
a study group, state legislator Bill Pritchard said.
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