Politics

Networks Pledge No More Miscalls

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

February 14, 2001 / 10:13 AM EST / CBS

Appearing before Congress, the heads of the network news divisions offered explanations for the embarrassing miscalls during last year's election night coverage and outlined how they plan to fix the vote-counting system to avoid similar problems in the future.

The executives agreed with many lawmakers that establishment of a uniform poll closing time would remove concerns that calling elections in Eastern states might influence voters in the West where polls are still open.

The news chiefs also claimed that technical problems, not political bias, were responsible for the election-night errors, and it is the news organizations themselves, not the government, that should fix them.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee, chaired by Rep. Billy Tauzin, heard testimony from the heads of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, The Associated Press and Voter News Service. VNS is a consortium created in 1993 by those six news organizations to provide exit polling data and actual voting results.

CBS News Correspondent Bob Fuss reports the hearing featured an embarrassing video montage showing network anchors on election night confidently declaring Florida for Al Gore, then for George Bush, then for neither.

Democrats on the panel said Congress should go beyond media coverage and do something about correcting faults in the election system. Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said he hoped the hearing, while looking at the "monumental screw-up" of the media, might better serve as a "wake-up call for all of us here ... to address the real issue of voter disenfranchisement."

There was wide support, both among lawmakers and the media representatives, for establishing a uniform closing time for the nation.

Tauzin said exit polling is not a new concern, and that going back to the 1980s reports based on it are believed to have had "a profound effect on local races, particularly congressional races in the West." He said that pattern continued last year with some of the VNS exit polling.

"There are serious flaws within the VNS models which do produce statistical bias in favor of Democrats," Tauzin said. "So the good news is there is no evidence of intentional bias."

The media chiefs outlined how they projected Gore the winner in Florida based on VNS calculations that failed to fully account for absentee ballots and didn't justify discrepancies between exit polling and actual voting.

All later retracted that projection. Early in the morning of Nov. 8, the five networks — but not the AP — gave Florida's 25 electoral votes to Bush and declared him the next president.

"CBS News and other network news operations made serious mistakes that long, confusing night -- mistakes I deeply regret," CBS News President Andrew Heyward said in his prepared testimony.

"Projecting Vice President Gore the winner in Florida, then retractinthat projection, then projecting and retracting a similar call for then-Governor Bush was not only embarrassing to say the least, but it was damaging to our most important asset: our hard-won credibility with our viewers, listeners and Internet users. We would quickly lose our audience and soon our entire business if people could not rely on the truth of what we say."

The network chiefs pledged to abide by recommendations made by their in-house or independent reports on election coverage, including not projecting election winners until all the polls in a state are closed, screening those making projections from the competitive pressures of other networks, and using AP statistics and other second sources to assure the accuracy of VNS reports.

AP President and chief executive Louis D. Boccardi stressed that while there were "serious shortcomings" in the Florida coverage, "fixing them is a job for the nation's editors and news directors, not its legislators."

He noted that Tauzin, in calling the hearing, had indicated that he was aware of the First Amendment issues raised by his inquiry. "To put it more plainly, we believe that such an official government inquiry into essentially editorial matters is inconsistent with the First Amendment values that are fundamental to our society."

It is up to Congress to fix problems in the election system, said NBC News President Andrew Lack. "In the meantime, we are committed to fixing our own."

"This election exposed flaws in the American voting system, imperfections mirrored in television's coverage of the election results," CBS News said in its report.

CNN's analysts, in a highly critical report, said television interfered with the electoral process. "In our opinion, that constitutes an abuse of power, if unintentionally so, by CNN and by all the mainstream television news operations," their analysis said.

The networks have stressed, and Tauzin has agreed, that there is no evidence of political bias in how winners were called in Florida and other states. They have agreed to accept many of the recommendations in the reports, including not projecting winners until all the polls in a state are closed, having VNS update its technology and using AP and other second sources to confirm VNS results.

CNN said it would not call races where the margin between candidates is less than 1 percent. ABC said it would insulate its decision-makers from what competing networks are saying and make sure viewers understand how it makes predictions.

There was also wide support among the networks for legislation being proposed by Tauzin and Rep. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, that would set a uniform poll-closing time for the nation.