No Election Night Bias By Networks
The networks relied on "clearly flawed" methods as they made mistaken early calls in the November election - probably affecting races in some states - but congressional investigators found no evidence they intentionally misled the nation, a key House member says.
The race among the networks to be the first to project winners, even when polls in a state or in other parts of the country remained open, "can, may and probably did have an effect on the outcome of some of the elections," House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin said Thursday.
[Read CBS News' report (.pdf) on Election Night newsgathering.]
"The system has bitten Democrats in the past and we think it bit Republicans this year," said Tauzin, R-La., who has invited the heads of the major networks to testify to his committee next week.
ABC News sent Tauzin a report Thursday in which it promised not to project a winner in any state until all polls in that state were closed. It also said it would clarify to viewers how it was making predictions and would insulate its decision-makers from the election announcements of other TV networks.
ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN initially called Florida for Democratic candidate Al Gore, retracted that projection several hours later and then, some hours after that, gave Florida's 25 electoral votes and the entire election to George W. Bush even though later returns would bring Gore into a virtual tie.
With the ABC report, Tauzin said, all the networks had completed some form of internal or independent review, and he praised their commitment to revamp their exit polling models for calling elections and the decisions of several to delay making projections until all polls in a state close.
Tauzin said he and Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., would push legislation to establish uniform poll closing times for federal elections nationwide.
Invited to testify at the hearing on Feb. 14 will be analysts who prepared reports on network election coverage and the heads of ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, Fox News, CNN, The Associated Press and Voter News Service.
Voter News Service is a consortium operated by those five broadcasters and the AP. It provides the six members with exit polling data and actual results to project elections. The AP did not call Florida for Bush in the early hours of Nov. 8 but did project, and then retract, victory for Gore earlier in the night.
Tauzin said that while his investigators found no evidence of intentional bias, VNS used "clearly flawed data models and clearly biased statistical results" that tended to favor Democrats. He said some of the models hadn't been updated in 30 years despite the dramatic rise in early mail-in and absentee voting.
Republicans have complained that the networks declared Gore the winner in Florida efore the polls closed in the Panhandle, where Bush anticipated a strong showing. The Panhandle is in the Central Time Zone and polls there closed one hour after the rest of the state. They have also questioned whether early decisions to award California to Gore might have affected some tight congressional races won by Democrats.
ABC, in its report, said there was "no basis whatsoever for concluding that there was any intentional bias on the part of anyone who took part in the projection process at ABC News."
But it said there were discrepancies between exit poll data and actual vote returns and "on average over time they have been shown to favor Democratic candidates somewhat more than Republican."
CNN last week released an independent report of election-night coverage that accused all the networks of confusing the public and interfering with democracy and called the reporting a "debacle." CNN said it would pay for an independent vote-analysis system and would not use exit projections to call close races in the future.
Tauzin said Congress was "treading in sensitive areas" by taking up free speech concerns with the media. But he added: "This is a serious problem. We both have credibility at stake here."