Election news 2000: What happened?
By April Davis
Special to
The Freedom Forum Online
12.07.00
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NEW YORK —News coverage of Election 2000 and its aftermath was
roundly criticized by a panel of prominent journalists yesterday for everything
from partisan rhetoric to disproportionate influence to sloppy reporting.
"In my own head, there is a serious question whether we journalists
have done the job we should have done in the last month," CBS anchor and
managing editor Dan Rather said. "We have tended, and I include myself in this
criticism ... to cover the courts and rely on the attorneys to explain the
system and the process. But we have not done the hard digging on questions such
as, 'Was there or was there not a deliberate effort to suppress black votes in
Florida?' Not enough digging on, 'Can the machines or can they not be fairly
easily finagled in favor of one candidate?'"
"There has been very little actual
wear-out-shoe-leather-make-telephone-calls reporting," he added. "Most of the
coverage has tended to be stand-outside-the
courthouse-let-the-lawyers-come-out-and-tell-you-what's-happening."
Rather was joined by Newsweek contributing editor Eleanor Clift and
New Yorker correspondent Joe Klein
for what Columbia University Journalism School Dean Tom Goldstein called a
"special edition" of the First Amendment Breakfast Series, which was held at
the First Amendment Center, co-sponsor of the event.
The panel was titled "Election 2004: Looking Ahead," but the panelists
mainly looked back — and no one was proud of the election night coverage,
or much of the coverage since then.
"This last month has once again demonstrated what is another great
problem in American journalism, and I don't know how to get around it," Klein
said. "And that is when anything big happens — like impeachment, like
Elian Gonzalez, like this last month — we have this cataclysmic collision
of media."
"There is a lot of air to fill and the more there is to fill, the more
likely people are going to start blowing off steam," Klein added. "Let's face
it: Television likes people who say outrageous things and clever things as
opposed to, 'Wait a second, we're just having a close election. There really
isn't anything huge going on. Let's just count the votes and we'll see you in
about a month.'"
Clift, a mainstay on TV's "The McLaughlin Group," admitted that in
joining the morning's panel she was just "glad to be anywhere I can finish a
sentence without being interrupted."
Assessing the impact of all-news cable channels, she said, "I know
their numbers are small, but I think they reach politically active people
across the country. I think they have an impact. The third of the country that
hated Clinton, I think, is the primary staple of these networks and I think
they have a voice and an impact that is larger than their numbers. And they are
perfectly entitled to that.
"I just wonder where the voices are on the other side," Clift
added.
"It seems to me that the passion is on the right. Ever since the
election, that's where the passion is, too. People who support Al Gore are not
going to go to the barricades or stand outside the vice president's house or go
down to Austin and wave flags. [But] you go past the vice president's house in
Washington and you've got an endless and growing crowd there screaming, 'Get
out of Dick Cheney's home!'" she said.
Klein disagreed.
"I think that we are kind of overstating the conservative impact on
cable. Certainly on radio, conservatives draw the largest audiences. But if you
look at CNN and MSNBC, I think their greatest bias is in favor of prurience, in
favor of the most spectacular story imaginable no matter which way it tilts,"
he said.
Panel moderator and First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams also noted,
in his opening remarks, that the right was mobilized but no more than the
commentators they read.
"Some of the more conservative opinion-givers in our society have lost
it in their coverage of the post-election weeks, as votes are counted and
recounted or not manually recounted," he said.
"I speak of serious journalists, prize-winning journalists and
journalists who, it seems to me, are loosely and irresponsibly using language
like 'coup d'etat' and 'stealing the election.' The columns of George Will,
Michael Kelly and Charles Krauthammer, the commentary of Robert Novak —
just in case you didn't think I was going to name anybody — seem to me
not only excessive ... but literally to have lost it," he added.
Klein expanded on that thought. "Normally my inclination in a
situation like this would be to be ornery and tilt against what everybody else
is saying — especially you, Floyd," he noted. "But I've got to say that
you're absolutely right about the tone of commentary on the conservative side
over the last month, which to me is a repetition of the absolutely outrageous
and ridiculous tone during the impeachment controversy and during the {Monica}
Lewinsky controversy.
"There is a difference this time," he added. "During impeachment, a
lot of the mainstream media also took up the ridiculously vituperative tone
that was established on the right. The mainstream media has been more
measured."
But how to explain what went wrong on election night, when the major
networks blew two calls for the winner of Florida's critical 25 electoral
votes?
For Rather, it's fairly simple. "Fear rules every newsroom in the
country," he said. Abrams asked Rather to forecast changes for the next
presidential election.
"I hope on my better days I'm a half-decent reporter, but I know
— and my record clearly shows — that I'm not worth a damn when it
comes to predicting anything," Rather replied. And then he added: "He who lives
by the crystal ball learns to eat a lot of broken glass, and I have digested
more than my share over the years."
"These problems of this last election night, while they may be fewer
in 2004, there is no insurance they'll be fewer," he also noted. "There is a
solution to this. The solution is a uniform national poll closing time. If
Congress passes and puts into effect a uniform national poll closing time,
these problems ... will evaporate. It's not a cure-all, but it's a
cure-aplenty."
Perhaps, but First Amendment Center Ombudsman Paul McMasters expressed
concern that the government would seek another kind of cure.
"The FCC is looking into
whether or not the networks should be reigned in on the use of exit polls
and making predictions. Congressman Billy Tauzin has summoned network leaders
down to have their feet put to the fire about the election coverage. We've had
several lawsuits filed that want to take the networks to task and prevent them
from using exit polls and perhaps impose other restrictions. These involve very
strong attacks on the First Amendment right of the press," he said.
Abrams agreed with McMasters' assessment, but dismissed the likelihood
of real government interference.
"These official challenges and second-guessing and investigations do
indeed have significant potential for chilling constitutionally protected
activity," he noted. "[But] it's an easy constitutional call to say that any
efforts to impose direct limitations on the press in conducting exit polls and
reporting as they like and reporting when they choose ... would be held to
violate the First Amendment."
Rather added, "I agree that there are First Amendment issues and if
you want to see my neck swell, you start talking about anybody in government
telling anybody in the press what to do and how to do (it). Thank God we are
free to make mistakes."
The details of election night 2000, Rather said, would make a
"believable novel" featuring someone like Gov. George W. Bush's cousin and Fox
News employee John Ellis. The scenario, he said, would go something like this:
"An Ellis-like character with a vested interest in having the election go one
way — or dealing with people, blood-kin or otherwise, who have vested
interest — [is] working for people who have vested interest in one
candidate over another."
"They make the call," he said. "This is where the fear comes in. ...
In Network B ... their corporate executives in the control room say, 'Fox
has called it. What are we waiting for? Call it, call it, call it.' And the guy
who is there ... has got bosses he's never seen before or hasn't seen in a
year who are saying 'call it.' And they call it."
Then, he added, "In Control Room 3, somebody says, 'God almighty, Fox
has called it, Network B has called it. And the head of the news division says,
'Where the hell are we? Why aren't we calling it?' The person who is in charge
of recommending to the network executive to make a call says, 'Well, I don't
think we're quite there yet and I'm a little afraid of making two bad calls in
a night and I'd just as soon hold off. The network executive says, 'Well, while
you're holding off we're going to look like the slowest person in the game.'
And so it goes."
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