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[Texsox]

Recent Stories By BETH FOUHY Associated Press Writer

 

 

Major network news chiefs review election, look to future

By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer

Last Updated 12:20 pm PST Tuesday, November 16, 2004

STANFORD, Calif. (AP) - The presidents of the three major television network news divisions were concerned about early election day exit polls that wrongly indicated Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry was leading President Bush in several key battleground states.

 

But they also said the problem had been compounded when the exit polls, which were sponsored by a consortium of major news organizations including the Associated Press, were leaked onto the Internet. That, the presidents said Monday night, resulted in a widely publicized but ultimately incorrect expectation of how the election would ultimately turn out.

 

"We're not happy that the exit polls, even in the first wave, were wrong," said NBC News president Neal Shapiro at a joint appearance of network news presidents at Stanford University. "We're all reviewing it, it should have been better. I think there were mistakes, some of which we're trying to figure out, and some of which we can't."

 

Shapiro and the other news presidents - David Westin of ABC News and Andrew Heyward of CBS News - met in a public forum to discuss and take questions about network coverage of the election, as well as the challenges posed by the rise of Fox News Channel, the proliferation of news across multiple media "platforms," and a public increasingly unwilling to plan around a fixed-time network newscast.

 

"There is an explosion in the number of news and quasi-news outlets and it goes into the Internet, it goes into broadband, streaming video, it's now on cell phones ... and those of us in network news have to recognize that," Westin said. "Technology is making it possible that the audience wants us to come to them, instead of making them coming to us which is traditionally what network news has done."

 

All three network news chiefs defended their decision to run just an hour of both parties' national conventions live each night, saying the conventions generated little if any real news.

 

And they said they believed network coverage of election returns Nov. 2 had been responsible, well paced, and relatively problem-free, compared to the erroneous calls made in 2000, which helped complicate that year's disputed presidential election outcome.

 

All three said their networks had set up investigative units to review any claims of voter fraud or problems with electronic voting technology this year, but that nothing significant had appeared anywhere to affect the election's outcome.

 

"A lot of the allegations we've looked into, they're just not true," Shapiro said. "Believe me, I'd love a juicy story about the election as much as anybody. Florida was a great story, but it's just not there this time."

 

On Iraq, the three said that, in retrospect, they should have more aggressively questioned the Bush administration's grounds for invading Iraq in the spring of 2003.

 

"Simply stated, we let down the American people on weapons of mass destruction, and I sincerely regret that," Westin said.

 

And while the networks continue to commit enormous resources to reporting from the war zone, the presidents said conditions in the country have made it too difficult to do much groundbreaking reporting now.

 

The three said that while they hoped to resist a push into opinionated, "edgy" news that has been the hallmark of Fox News and other cable outlets, they realized that Fox's success reminded them that networks needed to adapt to the new media marketplace in several ways.

 

"I think it's important to look at this as in increasingly sumptuous smorgasbord of choices, and Fox started that." Heyward said. "It's very different from the comfortable oligopoly that prevailed at the beginning of broadcast news, where you had networks with enormous market share. I think that's to the public benefit. It puts more pressure on us to be excellent."

Edited November 16, 2004 by Texsox

[YASNY]

Do you have a link for this? I'd like to read an uneditted version.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

I was reading the latest edition of Time Magazine and it mentioned that a lot of the early exit polls were skewed.

 

I'm having to type this directly from the article describing the action on election day.

 

"Bush was getting crushed in Pennsylvania and losing in Ohio and Florida. But something was odd. The polls were based on a turnout of 59 percent women and 41 percent men."

 

If that's how the exit pollsters were doing business then it's pretty easy to see how Kerry was ahead in the early going.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

The networks played this game in 2000 and they got burnt for their trouble, calling Florida for Gore a couple of hours before the polls closed and tamping down turnout among Bush voters.

 

This time they tried to tamp down the Republican vote and swing the election to Kerry by putting out skewed exit polls that claimed that Kerry was kicking Bush's ass when Bush was actually winning the whole time.

 

Trying to swing the election with phoney predictions didnt work in 2000 and it failed miserably in 2004. How about the leftist "mainstream" media stop trying to fiddle with peoples minds and report in an objective manner. It's bias like this which is the reason Fox News is cleaning up the floor with all the old line networks in the ratings.

[mreye]

On Iraq, the three said that, in retrospect, they should have more aggressively questioned the Bush administration's grounds for invading Iraq in the spring of 2003.

 

"Simply stated, we let down the American people on weapons of mass destruction, and I sincerely regret that," Westin said.

 

That's funny. You think he really feels bad or is just pissed that he didn't get the scoop?

[Texsox]

Do you have a link for this?  I'd like to read an uneditted version.

That was the entire artice I found at drudgereport.com

[Texsox]

The networks played this game in 2000 and they got burnt for their trouble, calling Florida for Gore a couple of hours before the polls closed and tamping down turnout among Bush voters.

 

This time they tried to tamp down the Republican vote and swing the election to Kerry by putting out skewed exit polls that claimed that Kerry was kicking Bush's ass when Bush was actually winning the whole time. 

 

Trying to swing the election with phoney predictions didnt work in 2000 and it failed miserably in 2004.  How about the leftist "mainstream" media stop trying to fiddle with peoples minds and report in an objective manner.  It's bias like this which is the reason Fox News is cleaning up the floor with all the old line networks in the ratings.

 

After the GOPsters get rid of the Judicial and Press, who will offer the check and balance? Or are you willing to just trust whatever the f*** the GOP wants to do?

 

And most politicians will tell you that once you have been declared the victor, your supporters do not come out. Calling the election for Gore HURT his chances not Bush. There was no need in Florida for Gore supporters to vote, which probably swung the election to Bush.

 

Look at the west coast numbers during Reagans landslide in 84. Dems picked up seats in the west when GOP voters stayed home after knowing Reagan won.

 

edited to add: I told the exit interviewer I voted for Nadar lying all the way. Exit interviews are always skewed.

 

Plus, from my years as an election judge in Illinois, woman vote early in the day and men later, so it would be normal for more women to have voted during regular business hours. More women are stay at home types then men. The men typically vote after work.

Edited November 17, 2004 by Texsox

[LowerCaseRepublican]

Exit polls were right every year until 2000 with the problems of DBT Choicepoint and voter purges. Katherine Harris was the head of the elections and also a vocal Bush campaigner in FL (conflict of interest much?)

 

In "The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy," Dr. Steven F. Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania says:

 

"As much as we can say in social science that something is impossible, it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote counts in the three critical battleground states [Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania] of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error."

 

The odds of those exit poll statistical anomalies occurring by chance are 250,000,000 to one. 250 MILLION to ONE.

 

He concludes the paper with this:

 

"Systematic fraud or mistabulation is a premature conclusion, but the election’s unexplained exit poll discrepancies make it an unavoidable hypothesis, one that is the responsibility of the media, academia, polling agencies, and the public to investigate."

 

http://truthout.org/unexplainedexitpoll.pdf

[mreye]

Exit polls were right every year until 2000 with the problems of DBT Choicepoint and voter purges.  Katherine Harris was the head of the elections and also a vocal Bush campaigner in FL (conflict of interest much?)

Oh come on. There's never been a "conflict of interest" similar to this on the other side, huh?

[Texsox]

Oh come on. There's never been a "conflict of interest" similar to this on the other side, huh?

The entire process is a money driven, conflict of interest. We only notice it when it really matters.

[LowerCaseRepublican]

Oh come on. There's never been a "conflict of interest" similar to this on the other side, huh?

I don't doubt there have been and it's completely asinine for both sides to have officials be vocal supporters of one candidate.

 

Why not then have a Libertarian or a Green party member etc. do the election stuff since we both know that those parties have a snowball's chance in Hell of winning the election.