The Big Mistake [News Coverage of Election 2000]

What's sure is that TV's election night practices are in for significant reupholstery well before the 2002 races. Several networks promise they'll project winners in the future only when all polls have closed in a state, not just a majority of them. ABC intends to advise viewers that projections are "informed, statistically based estimates" of the probable outcome of elections, not definitive declarations. They'll also remove television sets from the proximity of their decision desks so that analysts feel less pressured to make hasty calls.

Beyond that, legislators -- mostly in the person of congressman Billy Tauzin, Republican of Louisiana -- have been scrutinizing TV's election night performance. Tauzin says he won't sponsor any bill aimed at preventing exit polls or limiting vote projections -- legislation which, in any case, would clearly affront the First Amendment. He and a Democratic congressman, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, are introducing legislation to require the fifty states to close their polls at the same moment -- an often-proposed idea that would force drastic changes in the way TV news handles projections.

Despite the mistakes, gaffes, and embarrassments, or perhaps because of them, election night 2000 attracted the most households and viewers to TV screens since Nielsen began keeping such records with the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon cliffhanger. The late-night host Conan O'Brien joked that the networks were so thrilled with the ratings that they plan to call all elections incorrectly from now on.

The public's loss of trust in television news, however, was no laughing matter. In a CNN poll 79 percent of Americans said the networks did not act "responsibly" on election night. In future close elections, will most viewers believe what the networks tell them? How long will it take to regain their confidence? Why serve up quick-draw projections at all, since the public isn't clamoring for them? Is it really worth each network's paltry saving of $5-$10 million per election cycle to cede to a single entity so much influence and discretion? Or, contrarily, should the networks dismantle their individual decision desks and delegate a reconstituted, better funded VNS to make all projections, but in a more cautious, unhurried, less frenzied, and non-competitive mode?