Why the media should keep out.

[Juliangel]

This election is a PERFECT example of why the media should have a gag order in place until all the votes are in and counted.

Presidents were announced and retracted while polls were still open. Bush is unofficially claiming victory today, which when they have all the overseas votes to count that could send the count either way, I have no idea how they can do that.

No one knows which way the votes will go no matter how they have traditionally voted. I myself crossed party lines to vote in this election and it wasn't because of a hole punching mistake, we penciled in our votes.

I remember the 1992 election Clinton was announced the winner while polls on the West coast were still open. This causes people not to go to the polls because they feel their votes will not count. I know that with the electoral college that the votes may not really count in the presidential election but what about all the other elections that are on those ballots.

To me local elections are just as important to me as the national ones.

 

[Cheyenne]

Agreed, to a point. I don't think they have to wait until the votes are counted 100%, but the media should at least wait until the polls on the West coast are closed before they start declaring which state was won by which candidate.

 

[forgetunome]

Juliangel...

I agree the media is always so quick to jump on the bandwagon and start beating their drums trying to be the FIRST with THE news! I find it exasperating! In the greed to be first I think many times they ruin things.

I know as being someone from the west coast I find it extremely irritating that they announce it when we have still have 2 to 3 hours to vote. I agree it stops alot of people from going to the polls because they think what's the use the decision is already made.

God, now there's talk on the news of other states doing recounts if Bush wins by less than 5000 votes...will this election never end!

I wonder who our President gonna be?

 

[Ambrosious]

This election is a PERFECT example of why the media should have a gag order in place until all the votes are in and counted.

How far will this go? The media does jump the gun in the rush to report the news, however I do not want ANYTHING remotely resembling censorship. Sorry, but like everything else, the government would be the body regulating when the election results should be posted. Yeah, that's a good idea.

 

[CW]

Re: Juliangel...

I agree the media is always so quick to jump on the bandwagon and start beating their drums trying to be the FIRST with THE news! I find it exasperating! In the greed to be first I think many times they ruin things.

Ahhh,,, the very essence of network broadcasting,,, gotta be first,,, gotta be first,,, gotta be first,,, might look bad if I'm not,,, ratings might slip a tad for a day

Well, here's a news flash for ya,,, this time you looked damned silly,,, so maybe being FIRST isn't always the best thing to do? Maybe a sense of responsibility is best? Censorship is not the answer BTW,,, responsibility is the answer

I wonder who our President gonna be?

Right now I don't think that it really matters,,, one will be viewed as a "poor sport" and the other will not have won the popular vote,,,

Let's treat it like a game,,, heads you win, tails I win ( said with tongue FIRMLY planted in cheek )

[Edited by CW on 11-10-2000 at 06:21 AM]

 

[Juliangel]

[/B]

How far will this go? The media does jump the gun in the rush to report the news, however I do not want ANYTHING remotely resembling censorship. Sorry, but like everything else, the government would be the body regulating when the election results should be posted. Yeah, that's a good idea. [/B][/QUOTE]

No, not censorship just hold the results until all the polls have closed. Hawaii is 6 hours behind me, putting them 3 hours behind California. How many people so you think choose not to vote there because they feel their votes do not count.

 

[Ambrosious]

Yeah, but who is going to make them hold the results? Uncle Sam. And how long before 3 hours isn't long enough. Or 6 hours, or two days? What we have isn't perfect but I shudder to think of the improvements that might be made.

 

[Mustang Sally]

As an aspiring journalist (of the newspaper variety), I have to agree with Ambrosious. Keep the government OUT of the media. Don't even let them get a toe in the door.

Yeah, they screwed up. Even some newspapers ran headlines declaring Bush the winner, then hastily corrected themselves in time for the second edition print. Things like that will happen from time to time.

A better solution to the time zone problems might be to hold off counting at the polls in the East for a few hours. Then there won't BE anything like that to report.

 

[Ambrosious]

MS, I like your idea a whole lot better than regulating when something can be reported. Thank you.

 

[Roll-One]

I agree with you Julia, the Media jumps the gun on many issues, not just this one, i don't believe in censorship either, but come on, most of the time the media reports half truths, because they don't get the full story..

A friend of mine and I was talking about this when i was in Calif. last week, She felt like her vote never counted, because the Media had already declared a winner, and guess what?

They were wrong as usual...

 

[Mustang Sally]

I agree with you Julia, the Media jumps the gun on many issues, not just this one, i don't believe in censorship either, but come on, most of the time the media reports half truths, because they don't get the full story..

Most of the time? I don't think so. That's not fair at all. There IS such a thing as public accountability. If they're wrong most of the time, why would you still believe anything they say? They care very much about credibility.

You have to understand that media is business, existing to make money. They are not performing a public service. Ratings are everything. So when the broadcast media jump on a breaking story, they are doing their job. As a viewer (or listener), you should understand the story isn't complete yet. They're still in the process of collecting information, keeping you as informed as they can. If they get it wrong, they will correct themselves and apologize later. Yes, they are absolutely wrong to make premature declarations as they did on election night. They goofed. It happens.

But for all that, the media play an incredibly important role in society - they are watchdogs of the government. Think what the government could get away with without the public ever knowing if the media weren't there, eagerly awaiting the next slip-up, digging for dirt (cuz dirt makes a great story).

The very first thing a dictator will do is take control of the media and make it an arm of the government. You really don't want that.

 

[KillerMuffin]

Then the problem you run into is exit polling. They have tons of people out there asking all sorts of questions about how they voted, then reporting the results. I believe that one of those political analyst twits stated they decided who carried a state based upon the historical political leanings of the populous precints and exit polls.

The media does not know how to regulate itself, it does not know how to be responsible. Asking them to do it would be ridiculous. I do not condone censorship in most anyway, but I do agree that there should be a gag order. I'm not sure what you'd call it Ambrosious dear, but I call it tampering with the election. Californians have stated that they have low voter turnout because they believe their votes do not count, why? They believe the president has already been elected, or the president's election is inevitable due to the fact that the media already proclaims california as a democratic state, even before the polls close. Ambrosious love, this isn't a case of the media reporting the news, this is a case of the media making the news, projecting winners based on their own political analysts. They not only have no right to project a winner, they are, in my mind, commiting a federal felony by tampering with election results.

Another solution, though less convenient to the American public, is to have all polls open and close at the same time. After all, God forbid, the media will never muzzle itself to prevent election tampering.

 

[Myrrdin]

Why the need for speed....?

Well in the UK, exit polls cannot be published until after the actual polls have closed. Of course that's easier because we all vote in the same time zone. Even then the pundits use lots of words like indicate, may, and perhaps, to qualify their predictions. (Because historically UK polling companies get it wrong as well.) It's treated as a game, to fill in time, until actual, officially counted results come through. Many areas don't count their ballots until the following day anyway. Postal ballots arrive in advance. Ballot papers are filled in by hand and counted by hand. It might be low tech, but its more or less idiot proof. Candidates can always ask for recounts. And the operation is overseen by a civil servant

Most of the UK coverage has been about why do you need to know your next President by the following breakfast time , when he doesn't take office for months ahead ? Whereas in the UK, the new Prime Minister assumes office and needs to form his Cabinet straightaway.

 

[CreamyLady]

The media coverage was embarrassing, to say the least. However, the behavior of the two contenders is even more embarrassing.

Is anyone else hoping that they have a grown-up or two around them to keep things on an even keel. Or send them for a time-out. I can't tell you what kind of an example this is setting for children!

 

[Latina]

Everybody I know here in the San Jose area of California voted early in the morning, before going to work. So the media declaring someone won in some east-coast state did not affect our votes, we had already voted HOURS before these declarations were made.

Declaring Bush or Gore the winner in some state also does NOT, I believe, make someone who was in favor of Gore suddenly vote for Bush because Gore wasn't going to win, or vice versa. Most voters felt pretty strongly about their particular candidate. Those who didn't vote because someone was declared a winner in New York or Georgia probably wouldn't have voted anyway, they didn't have strong enough political convictions either way to get off to the polls and vote for one candidate or another.

The media was doing their job, infoming the public of what they know. And they are STILL doing their job, informing the public as details develop in Florida. The media is made of humans, and they get their information from other humans, humans make mistakes. As they see-sawed between Bush and Gore as winner, they were providing the public with the most recent and most accurate information that was available to them at that particular moment. I would say that means they were and are doing their job DAMNED well!

Government control/censorship of the media, to prevent reporting results before the polls closed everywhere, is NOT a good idea. I don't believe many changed their vote, or decided not to vote, based on the media. But if we muzzle the media, then it won't matter WHO won an election, once the government does not have a watchdog press monitoring them, there will be NO free elections, just a dictator-for-life. We already have some elements of that, in the form of the CIA and other military-industrial entities whose enormous power only occassionally becomes evident in the press, let's not give them MORE power by muzzling the media.

I also agree, many vote for what matters to them in local elections. We had on the ballot, money for improvemnets to schools, and money to improve local highways and mass-transit, to connect mass-transit betwen San Francisco and San Jose, and to extend various mass-transit to the various bay-area airports. These issues mattered to me and many others, and we got out to vote for them, even those who really didn't care who was president voted because these issues mattered to them. The media predicting who won as president did not, I believe, sway those who are passionate about these local issues, from voting on those measures regardless of how they voted for president.

That brings up a question: those 19,000 ballots in Florida that were discredited because of the presidential vote, were their votes for local officals and local ballot measures counted, even if their presidential votes could NOT be counted? Or were ALL items on their ballots tossed out? These people should have had a voice on other issues that mattered to them, even if it cannot be determined who they wanted as president, but I fear the mistake about the presidential vote may have kept their voice from being heard on all the other things they voted about as well.
Does anybody know for sure if the rest of their vote WAS counted on these 19,000 ballots?

-- Latina (beauty AND brains!)

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

I have lots of examples of times the media should have a "gag" order. Military actions, assasination attempts, terrorist attacks, world-changing astronomical or biological discoveries, etc. etc. You gag for one reason you should gag for them all. Then we won't have to worry about voting because who needs it when your freedoms are gone anyway?

The Networks and cable news outlets should absolutely have a voluntary moritorium on calling the election until all polls are closed. Unfortunately, until someone sticks Hawaii in the Gulf of Mexico I just don't see it happening. And this years botching of the Florida calls should make it clear to the TV honchos that they don't know everything they think they know.

Gagging the press is never the answer. Ethics are. Too bad they're so often usurped by the quest for advertising dollars.

Which brings me to something I've always thought the networks should look into -- going back to the idea they had in the 50s, that it was okay for the news programs to lose money.

 

[KillerMuffin]

Oddly enough Ms. Latina, when I had the grave misfortune of residing in Monterey county the people around me voted after work as the polls didn't open soon enough. They would be late for work, traffic was murderous you know? Having been driven around in San Jose, I can see how that would also affect some of the population. I received my information regarding the affects of the new media on voter turnout in California from a source other than myself. You? You may want to consider West Coast voter turnout following the Regan/Mondale landslide.

As far as muzzling the media? The yappers will never shut up. They give states to candidates after only 3% of the precints reported in, or less. They gave California to Gore immediately after the polls closed without even bothering to look at any of the reported percentages. Doesn't it feel lovely to have them tell everyone how you decided before they even knew what you'd decided? Isn't that rather like they were deciding for you? I voted in Alaska by absentee ballot, so my exit polls were nil. However, I was incensed that they'd give the state of Alaska to Bush before the polls had even closed, at least verbally, and the instant they closed his number went up by 3 points. They may have been correct, Alaskans are strongly conservative republicans about some things, but that doesn't change the fact that they didn't even bother to ask us our opinions before proclaiming what we thought to the world.

The FUBAR in Florida is a prime example of the media making news rather than reporting it. I just love how they turned around and blamed Florida election officials and "suspect reports from Florida" rather than admitting that they themselves were wrong when they were the ones who jumped the gun and awarded Florida to Gore.

Who gave these idiots that power to proclaim who won what? To project winners and decide who might be the next president before all the votes are tallied?

Preventing them from influencing elections isn't censorship, it's preventing election tampering and those jackals are guilty of it. Report exit polls, report how things are going, report the scandals, such as the one in St. Louis, report how the candidates are reacting, report the facts. DO NOT report their own speculation, do NOT project winners based on sketchy information and political anylsty theories.

Reporting what voters have voted on before the election is complete is election tampering and it should be treated as such. They aren't just exercising their freedom of the press rights, they are influencing voters. They not only have no right to do this, they have a civic responisibilty to NOT do it.

Elections should be covered, yes. Vote tallies should not be reported before the election is over. Just because the polls are closed in New Jersey does NOT mean the election is over. The election isn't over until Alaskan polls are closed.

 

[Latina]

I think you confirmed my point, KM. You voted AFTER a winner in New Jersey or wherever was declared. You did not CHANGE your vote, or decide NOT to vote, just because the media was already announcing a winner. Impact of media predictions on YOUR voting: zero. Can't you belive that few, if any, other voters were swayed by what the media was predicting, as you clearly were not?

If the media did NOT affect how you and others voted or whether you voted, then why the need to gag them in advance?

And if they say Gore won, now wait it was Bush I mean it was Gore yes it was Bush oh definitely it was Gore, what does all that matter, eventually the correct tally will be determined and we'll know who actually won, the press yammering dosn't matter. Nor do the opinions on the BB, really, they will not influence the outcome either.

I also find it odd that the BB seems to think that confusing ballots that may have been the product of the "good guy" Bush family were NOT tampering with the election, but premature announcements by the media (whom conservatives often view as evil) WERE a form of tampering. It is a bit hypocritical, I think. In the law, INTENT is the main issue. There may or may not have been intent to confuse in those ballots. If it's true that Florida troopers were used to prevent certain people from voting (and I don't personally know whether that IS true), then there was CLEARLY intent there. But I see no INTENT to prevent voters from going to the polls, when the media announced the best information they had on who was winning and where they were winning. They were doing the job they wer hired to do.

-- Latina

 

[KillerMuffin]

I think you confirmed my point, KM. You voted AFTER a winner in New Jersey or wherever was declared. You did not CHANGE your vote, or decide NOT to vote, just because the media was already announcing a winner. Impact of media predictions on YOUR voting: zero. Can't you belive that few, if any, other voters were swayed by what the media was predicting, as you clearly were not?

No love, my vote was cast by absentee ballot and probably will not count, as my residency is "questionable." I cast my ballot and mailed it off about two days before New Jersy's polls even opened. When I lived in Alaska, I worked at place that had a voting station right next door, with easy access. My husband, on the other hand, didn't vote for the president, because they'd already declared Clinton the winner and he didn't think it mattered enough to go outside and start the truck up and drive to the voting station.

How did I confirm your point again I wonder?

 

[April]

Re: Re: Juliangel...

Let's treat it like a game,,, heads you win, tails I win ( said with tongue FIRMLY planted in cheek )

[Edited by CW on 11-10-2000 at 06:21 AM]

Funny story reported on last night's local news. Down in Saline County, one of the local races was extremely close. One guy was ahead by one vote. A recount was done, and the election was a dead heat. According to state law, the election was then to be decided by the election offical 'by lot'. Well, in good old Arkie style, they flipped a coin! LOL I'm not making this up! They both agreed to it, and that race has been settled. *shaking head in amazement*

 

[teresafannin]

I have to agree about the press & ethics. I speak from personal experience after the last year. In the first hours after the shootings, the newspaper was in such a hurry that they printed many errors in the morning edition. One young man who was home all night was reported as killed. My son was the first name shown in the paper & they got his name wrong & no one is sure how they got the picture they ran of my son. The television stations also printed information before it was confirmed by the police. I was still making the phone calls to family & friends when JM's name was shown on the local & national news. I realize that they are just doing their job, but they need to get the facts straight first. One of the things I do as a way to try to bring some good out of this is to work with journalists to help them understand how to deal with things like what happened to us. I think we have made some changes, at least here in my area, but there is a long way to go. I oppose censorship in all forms, but I do believe that announcing winners before the polls close does affect whether or not some people vote.

 

[Guest]

1 thing is clear.

 

[Weird Harold]

I also find it odd that the BB seems to think that confusing ballots that may have been the product of the "good guy" Bush family were NOT tampering with the election, but premature announcements by the media (whom conservatives often view as evil) WERE a form of tampering

I grew up in Oregon, when the media didn't wait for the polls to close anywhere before projecting the winner. The fact that they wait until pols close before projecting any particular state is because of the effect it had on voter turnouts in Oregon, Washington and California. (before Alaska and Hawaii were states.)

I find it irritating that you keep harping that Govenor Jeb Bush is responsible for a confusing ballot designed by the democrat elected by the voters who are complainng as election commissioner. A ballot which was changed because the complained about the small print on previous ballots being confusing.

This certainly sounds, to me, like these voters would be confused if you read them the ballot and punched the holes for them. (Something that Nevada allows and provides for, BTW. Oregon used to do the same, and I believe that most of the other states, including Florida, allow for "assisted voting.")

Does the Governor of California personally design and approve the ballots there? Were there no ballots disqualified in California, no votes cast by mistake because the voter didn't get the ballot and voting procedures explained?

The Florida Election results were never going to be official until the 17th of November, no matter what happened.

One more interesting thing about the Florida Election:

The disproportionate vote for Buchannon did NOT trigger an automatic judicial review for being a statistical anomaly. It didn't because MORE votes were cast for Buchannon in 1996 in that county!

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Indy, it's not that bad really. First of all, ALL of this happens every Election. There are always irregularities. Always. You try and get 100 million people to do the same thing in one day.

The only reason we're hearing so much about this now is the rare event of a close race hinging on a few hundred votes in a key state. It happened 100 years ago, too.

No election system world is perfect, but if ours makes us methodically and carefully count the votes once every century, I'm fine with it.

As for voting the dead guy, I could be wrong, but I think it's the law that his name must remain on the ballot so that the voice and will of the people is still heard. I think I'd have to argue with with its value, though.

Democracy in action. The President isn't elected until December. There's plenty of time to count Florida. No shame Indy.