Cautious calling
From Brian Todd
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- It seems everyone got the memo.
"All the 'too close to call' announcements are not due to incompetence ... It's caution," said Chris Matthews on MSNBC.
That was the watch-word throughout the night, according to one network executive. The broadcast and cable news networks were determined not to repeat those bold calls and corrections of 2000.
"Nobody wanted to be out there with a prediction that turned out to be wrong," says Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post and CNN's "Reliable Sources." "And as a result they were slower, they were more deliberate, they didn't go out on a limb."
There were two exceptions: Between 12:30 and 1 a.m. ET, Fox News and then NBC made the boldest projections.
"This race is all but over," said Tom Brokaw on NBC. "President Bush is our projected winner in the state of Ohio."
The other networks stayed away from that call.
"Ohio is too close to call," Wolf Blitzer said on CNN.
How much of a stretch was that projection for Fox and NBC?
Rem Rieder of the American Journalism Review says, "You know, it was a little bolder than most of the night, but I don't think it was really a journalistic crime or anything like that."
Still, for that growing constituency of viewers who flip around the dial, it did add some confusion. Which network do you believe?
Most news organizations got their results from one central consortium, called the National Election Pool. It was then up to the networks' own experts to interpret those numbers.
"It's kind of like letting people inside the newsroom. They can see the raw process. They can see the judgments that different networks make -- some being cautious, some being not so cautious, and they can make up their own minds about who's right, who's wrong and what remains to be seen," says Kurtz.
Network executives and news watchdog groups tell CNN they generally believe the cautious approach worked even though it made for long stretches of not-exactly-breathless television.
"You have great anticipation. You want to know who's going to win. Seven o'clock you turn on the television. You're fired up. And then, except for a few predictable states being awarded, it takes a long time to really learn anything," says Rieder.
CBS viewers could have filled that void, by keeping count of what are now widely referred to as "Ratherisms."
CBS anchor Dan Rather offered these colorful phrases:
"This race is hotter than the devil's amber;" "We're all over these returns like white on rice;" "Bush is sweeping through the South like a big wheel in a cotton field;" and "In Missouri: The Show-Me State -- show me insufficient data."
There were a lot of phrases like "insufficient data" and "too close to call" used throughout the night. One word you didn't hear much if at all: "declare." The networks all took pains to say "project" -- a much safer word. One media critic says we can expect that trend to continue.
