Congressional Republicans charge networks with election-night bias
By The Associated Press
11.17.00
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| Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., flanked by Rep. Billy
Tauzin, R-La., left, and Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., at a Capitol Hill
press conference yesterday, discusses the effect television news coverage might
have had on the presidential election. |
WASHINGTON — House Republicans yesterday accused the television
networks of being biased toward Vice President Al Gore in their election-night
winner calls.
They said early calls for Gore could have affected the outcome in
Florida and discouraged Republican voters in other parts of the country.
Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., said that by making early calls on states
going to Gore and delaying calls on states Texas Gov. George W. Bush was
carrying, "you receive a picture of America believing that Al Gore was sweeping
the country, that George W. Bush was having trouble carrying his states."
He said there was a "very disturbing picture, I think, of probable
bias."
Tauzin, chairman of the House Commerce subcommittee on
telecommunications, said he plans to hold hearings on media coverage of the
election either in December, when Congress returns to its lame-duck session, or
more likely when the new Congress convenes in January.
CNN Chairman Tom Johnson, in two letters to Tauzin yesterday, said he
would name an independent advisory committee to look into what went wrong in
the news network's election night coverage. But he added that "as chairman of
CNN, I state categorically there was no intentional bias in the election night
reporting."
Su-Lin Nichols of ABC News said the network was undertaking a "top to
bottom review of our election night projections. ... We take this matter very
seriously and intend to review all of the facts so that we can institute
changes to ensure that this situation does not occur again."
CBS News President Andrew Heyward said Tauzin's accusation that there
was bias in CBS' election-night reporting "is completely without foundation."
The network also said it had formed a panel to investigate the internal
procedures used to call the races.
Tauzin claimed there were delays in calling nine states that Bush had
won by at least six percentage points but there were no delays in any state
that Gore carried by six percentage points. His data — which came, he
said, from work done for the Annenberg Project by David Eisenhower, grandson of
former President Eisenhower — used CNN as a source.
Between 7:49 p.m. and 8 p.m. EST Tuesday, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox, ABC and
The Associated Press all called Florida for Gore. Some two hours later the
networks and the AP began pulling back that projection as actual voter count
revealed how close the race was. Early Wednesday the networks declared the
state for Bush, effectively giving him the presidency, but then had to retreat
again when the vote ended in a near tie. The AP did not call the race for Bush,
either in Florida or for the presidency.
Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., said the early call giving Florida to Gore
could have affected thousands of votes in the state's Panhandle, a stronghold
for Bush where the polls closed an hour after the rest of the state because the
area is in the central time zone.
Earlier this week, elections officials in at least three counties in
the Florida Panhandle said they had no evidence of voters discouraged by the
network calls. Brenda Renfroe, assistant supervisor of elections for Escambia
County in Pensacola, Fla., said the television call was made only about 15
minutes before polls closed.
"I can't imagine anyone in line would have heard it, and we didn't
have any reports of anyone walking away," Renfroe said.
But the centrist Republican Leadership Council said yesterday it had
commissioned a phone survey of more than 35,000 Panhandle voters in which 2,380
Bush supporters said they decided not to vote after hearing that Gore had won
the state.
Rep. Chris Cox, R-Calif., said giving Florida and other crucial states
such as Pennsylvania and Michigan to Gore while polls on the West Coast were
still open was in part responsible for the second-lowest turnout in California
since 1972. He said the outcome of several close House races in his state that
went to Democrats might have been affected because Republican voters were
discouraged.
In response to such accusations, Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., the House
Telecommunications Subcommittee's ranking member, promised to introduce
legislation requiring all 50 states to close their polls at the same time.
"I believe the only real bias the media demonstrates is not toward one
candidate or another but rather toward being first," said Markey, quoted in
Broadcasting & Cable. "That
dynamic, not any personal or institutional tilt in favor of Democratic or
Republican results, led to the extraordinary errors and reversals of judgment
that we saw on election eve."
The idea of uniform poll closings was proposed almost 20 years ago,
after early network calls in the 1980 election gave the presidency to Ronald
Reagan long before many West Coast voters had even gone to the polls. States
rejected the notion, however, saying it overrode their self-governing
authority.
Tauzin said that, in preparation for hearings, his staff would be
talking to the Voter News Service about how election-night calls were made. VNS
is a consortium of the networks and AP that uses voter exit polls and actual
results to help make election projections.
Under a 1985 agreement, the networks usually have withheld using voter
exit polls to call elections until most polls in a given state are closed.
Update
TV chiefs to testify before Congress on election coverage
Rep. Billy Tauzin's House committee will hold Feb. 14 hearing on networks' erroneous election-night projections.
02.09.01
Previous
House panel to review news media's election calls
Rep. Billy Tauzin said early call of Florida for Al Gore may have deterred voters in Western states from going to the polls.
11.10.00
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