All the President's Media

I thought by the time I wrote this, we'd know who the new President of the United States would be. I even put off writing the article for a day in the (vain) hope that there would be a decision. I hope by the time you actually read this, there HAS been a decision. It's certainly the most protracted US Presidential election in history.

Some of the blame for the shenanigans has been laid at the feet of the broadcast media – and it's a fair call.

What went on

One of the effects of globalisation is that most of the world's media has just about instant access to the news, as it happens. Even though the newsroom I work in is halfway round the world from the United States, we have the same satellite and information feeds as a newsroom in the middle of, say, California. And because of the time difference, the goings-on of election night happened during our day shift, putting us in an ideal place to watch what actually happened.

The networks very early on in the proceedings called Florida. As everybody knows by now, they announced Vice President Al Gore had won for the Democrats, inflicting a mortal blow on the Republican campaign. An hour later, they retracted that announcement. A couple of hours later, they announced George W Bush had won, inflicting a mortal blow on the Democrat campaign. Then they decided the whole thing was too close to call, and that's where we've been for a couple of weeks.

Was there bias?

On November 16th, House Republicans accused the networks of being biased towards the Democrats.

Their argument was that between 7:49 p.m. and 8 p.m. EST, the networks NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox, ABC and The Associated Press all called Florida -- with its decisive 25 electoral votes -- for Gore. Polls were still open until 8 p.m. in the western part of the state.

The Republicans say some of their voters may have not bothered to turn up to vote because the decision had already been made.

Rep. Billy Tauzin from Louisiana announced ""I think there is now a presumption of bias in the reporting, and that the networks will have a duty when they do come before us in our hearing to overcome that presumption."

The networks, needless to say, deny the accusation strenuously. After all, the whole point of news is that it's supposed to be unbiased reporting – otherwise we might as well be living in Iraq.

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