www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Liberal Media Bias

Did anyone notice on Tuesday night that the liberal media was very quick to give Pennsylvania to Kerry with a solid 120,000 vote lead, Wisconsin to Kerry with an 11,000 vote lead but Ohio, with a 135,000 lead for Bush was too close to call?

Nevada
99% vote counted with 51.3536% for Bush but was �too close to call� and remained that way at all but one network until Wednesday morning.

Ohio
100% of the votes counted with 51.2% for Bush but �too close to call� at almost all of the networks at 10 AM Wednesday morning.

Pennsylvania
99% vote counted with 51.08% for Kerry when called for Kerry

New Mexico
99% vote counted with 50.8816% for Bush but was �too close to call� and remained that way at some of the networks until Wednesday morning.

New Hampshire
99% vote counted with 50.7235% for Kerry when called for Kerry.

Iowa
99% vote counted with 50.5325% for Bush but was �too close to call� and remained that way at some networks until Wednesday morning.

Wisconsin
99% vote counted with 50.2255% for Kerry when called for Kerry.

The vote advantage for Bush in Ohio was always larger then the vote advantage for Kerry in Pennsylvania. Any margin for Kerry caused them to give that state to Kerry. They did not do the same for Bush, even when he had much larger margins.

Is there any wonder the people no one believes anything the liberal media says anymore?

I�m glad that they no longer make any attempt to hide their support for the chief Democratic platform issues (abortion, the homosexual agenda, etc.). At least all of America can know where they stand.

Gary:

Maybe I'm showing my age, but . . . I took a course in journalism from a New Left professor during the height of the Vietnam War and the protests on campus--1970. He told us that all media was slanted to the political view of the writer. So I expect the media to have some bias no matter what they want us to believe. I guess I developed too critical a stance toward it--my wife gets upset when I yell at the TV news and talk back to the set. I'm not surprised by your observations, but maybe I'm just becoming cynical about the "news" I hear.

You expected . . . ?????? Objective reporting??????

BOB

I don't know if this fits into your definition of the liberal news media, but Fox News Channel called Pennsylvania for John Kerry at 10:57 p.m. Eastern Time.

ABC called it at 11:04 p.m. and PBS called it at 11:06 p.m.

The other networks called it a few moments before Fox did.

As for Wisconsin, it wasn't called by any of the networks until 5 a.m. Eastern Time Wednesday.

The calls are based on key precincts, where voting patterns can discern larger trends. States aren't called when you can't discern those trends. All the networks make their calls based on the same vote totals, that come from the Associated Press.

--Tim Cuprisin

Did you notice how overly cautious ABC and CNN were in calling anything? I guess once burned for premature calls in 2000, twice shy this time around.

Just a thought - In Ohio, the polls closed at 7:30pm, with one caveat - the people who were in line at 7:30 were permitted to vote - no matter how long the remaining wait. Some polling places did not close until after 11:00pm.


You can't count the votes until the polling place closes.


Sharon

True, and ABC only reported results when polling places were closed in a particular state. We were lucky here. Over half the people who voted in my county were early voters. We had 130,000 early voters and maybe something like 60,000 who voted on election day, so that worked out well.

There is a greatly increased interest in and discussion of early voting here in Ohio following Tuesday's exercise in democracy. As of right now, only absentee ballots can be cast early - there is no provision for early voting.

Yet.


Sharon

Interesting election observations from all of you.

From Tim's time line, one could speculate that networks are chomping at the bit to make an election call. Following the first network to call a race it appears that the others take the plunge. I'm sure they monitor each others election coverage and don't want to be seen by viewers as behind the news curve.

Regarding my state, NM, our Democrat Secretary of State sure is conservative when it comes to declaring GW Bush the victor.

She still hasn't named Bush the winner. :rolleyes:

Paul

I think it was more a combination of caution from the fiasco of 2000 in calling the election, in addition to a very complex state-specific system of counting ballots, which varies substantially in how each state counts the votes, handles the absentees and provisionals, certified the election, etc. etc.

Tim is right on the money. Looks pretty definite and decisive from the actual time line. And since Fox wasn't the first to call it, the assertion of "bias" on the coverage doesn't pan out.

We don't have a TV, and switching between Christian radio and NPR, I felt the bias was reversed, with NPR doing a much better and fair job of the radio coverage.

Paul,

I think that in states where the gap is rather less than the number of outstanding ballots, a "call", in the sense of a legal pronouncement, by the secretary of state represent a serious error in judgment. Network "calls" are only projections without legal effect and thus have a lesser threshold of caution.

Well I guess those exit polls were done by one firm and the all the networks shared them. That is why they all said the same thing. They were talking about it on Fox, it was interesting.

Diak,

I couldn't stand the thought of watching one of the commercial networks, so I flipped to PBS. They had an interesting way of declaring a state won - they tracked the four networks and the AP. They would note when, say, NBC or ABC projected a state, but they wouldn't add in that state's electoral votes until AP called it too. In between, they had some of the least breathless, most intelligent discussions of election history, politics, etc - and there was good balance and a merciful lack of flash & bombast to it all.

Sharon
(who really misses Bob Edwards)

I don't believe elected officials ever "call" an election anywhere close to election night.

Generally, the Associated Press (or, possibly, some sort of news consortium) makes the unofficial call based on unofficial vote counts. When I was a wire service reporter in Chicago back from 1978-'80, the local service I worked for, City News Bureau, did the unofficial tally for, as I recall, Cook County.

Elected officials, like a secretary of state, wouldn't make a pronouncement until there are certified official results which often doesn't happen 'til long after election night.

As a matter of fact, the Republican secretary of state for Ohio was on the networks early Wednesday morning after Fox and NBC were the only two to call Ohio for Bush. When asked to make a pronouncement on the outcome, his response was something like "that's your job."

Now, about Bob Edwards, he's on XM Satellite Radio every morning on their new public radio channel. You can find information at www.xmradio.com [xmradio.com]

--tim

Tim,

Agreed - and the law in Ohio also sez that the provisional ballots can't even be tallied until at least 10 days after the election - so the results aren't "officially" in yet.


As for Bob Edwards, yes, I am aware that he is on XM sattelite radio. We have no vehicles equipped to receive such, and living as many people do, one paycheck from disaster, there are far more important things to budget for.

Best,

Sharon

I am being hard on the NM Secretary of State.

The problem is dealing with absentee and provisional ballots.

In NM absentee ballots cannot be counted until after the polls close and, of course, in this election there are a large number of absentee voters. Provisional ballots cannot be counted until a few days after the election. Currently, there are more provisional ballots uncounted then the margin that GWB leads John Kerry.

Al Gore beat GW Bush by only 366 votes in the last presidential elecion in NM. Caution is warranted for the final election count.

Our election process needs some tweeking to make it more inclusive, faster and accurate.

Thanks to everybody for your posts.

Paul