Posted on 11/04/2004 12:50:49 PM PST by Cableguy
[only intersting parts are this]
The critical moment came at 12:41 a.m. Wednesday, when, shortly after Florida had been painted red for Mr. Bush, Fox News declared that Ohio - and, very likely, the presidency - was in Republican hands.
Howard Wolfson, a strategist, burst into the "boiler room" in Washington where the brain trust was huddled and said, "we have 30 seconds" to stop the other networks from following suit.
The campaign's pollster, Mark Mellman, and the renowned organizer Michael Whouley quickly dialed ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC - and all but the last refrained from calling the race through the night. Then Mr. Wolfson banged out a simple, two-line statement expressing confidence that Mr. Kerry would win Ohio once the remaining ballots were counted.
"What was driving our decision making was the memory of how in 2000, by allowing Florida to go for Bush, a lot of momentum was blocked," said one person who was in the room. "Our whole goal was stop the train from moving that way."
Train stopped, lawyers and strategists at the campaign's Washington headquarters prepared court papers to challenge Ohio's process for counting provisional ballots, and made spreadsheets comparing each county's provisional ballots with its margin of victory or defeat.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
OK so they didn't want to interuppt the momentum in Alaska and throw the election??
"No matter what the bleeping voters do, if ABC, CBS, and CNN don't call it, it hasn't happened. If only NBC had kept their mouths shut, Fox would have been the only network out there calling Ohio for Bush and we can dismiss them!"
I have posted this elsewhere and will continue to do so:
BOYCOTT DRUDGE! Hold him to the same standard as we held SeeBS News. I don't provide Wonkette (who we KNOW is sympathetic to the DNC) with any business and I will not read Drudge from now on. He put those polls up in banner headlines and then tried to have it both ways by adding little, tiny caveats. I will not give him any more of those lovely, lucrative "hits" to his site and I encourage you all to do the same. BOYCOTT DRUDGE!
Somebody should go to prison for this.
why anyone would have had CBS, CNN, ABC on in the first place for news coverage would only confirm the Canadian perspective of us as "psychologically damaged"..
..but at any rate, NBC and FOX continued to show updated total vote counts and precincts reporting for IA, WI, and NM. im willing to give them some benefit of the doubt on these 3 as there were some close margins and apparently absentee ballots to consider.. NEV on the other hand was a different story. It was the only remaining state uncalled that FOX and NBC began to simply label as "too close to call" while ALSO intentionally not showing the updated total vote count and precincts reporting. Why? Because at that point NEV had 100% completed returns with Bush comfortably ahead. Pathetic... and transparent.
Equally bad was B. Williams on MSNBC with IMUS saying "We are in a position to say when states fall, but not to announce a winner of this election"... come on Brian..more transparent than the big woody you have in anticipation of getting ready to sit on the golden Brokenjaw's throne in the near future.
I don't watch them because I trust them. I watch them because I don't trust them.
Drudge fell fo this one.
On the face of it I agree. But then, if the voting constituency is dumb enough to fall for these pranks maybe we don't deserve the freedoms we have. Do we want to enact a host of laws to prosecute this behavior, or shall we grow wise to it and act accordingly with our votes?
On the face of it I agree. But then, if the voting constituency is dumb enough to fall for these pranks maybe we don't deserve the freedoms we have. Do we want to enact a host of laws to prosecute this behavior, or shall we grow wise to it and act accordingly with our votes?
Sheez. Second double post in two days. Sorry.
He wants to run for Gov of OHIO next time
This is like telling the Captain of the Titanic 'don't excite the crew and passengers'.
CNN invented a new color and category for OHIO.
Susan Estrogen was out of control, basically telling Bret to shove his commentary where the sun don't shine because the Two Johns had the exit polls and were going to win. Fox should just terminate her contract.
NBC broke w/ the rest of the MSM and called Ohio for Bush shortly after FOX...notice who won the ratings battle....
NBC TOP TV AUDIENCE FOR ELECTION WRAP 10.7 RATING/15 SHARE... ABC 9.2/13... CBS 6.1/8... [CABLE RELEASED 2:30 PM ET]....
I'd love to see a timeline that shows when each state was called by each of the networks. After the 2000 election some clever freeper created a chart that showed CNN taking roughly 2-3 times as long to call Bush states as Gore states. He stacked up states on each side with the same or similar margins of victory and it was clear that there was an effort under way to make Bush's big victories look smaller and Gore's narrow victories to be clear.
bump
I forget where I heard this, but there was once a Russian General visiting the US as part of a military liason mission.
He was with his US counterpart walking down the street. As they past a series of newspaper vending machines, he stopped to look at all of the headlines. Noting that the headlines and front page stories above the fold were nearly identical, he then turned to his US counterpart and said, "I don't know how you people do it. In Russia, we used to control the newspapers, and could never get the kind of consistency in reporting across all of the news outlets like you guys do. No matter what media outlet you choose in the US, you get the same news."
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