Election night coverage blends caution with glitz

LOS ANGELES - Determined to avoid a rush to judgment that backfired four years ago, US television cautiously reported the trickle of Election Night 2004 results, but two networks broke ranks early on Wednesday to project President George W. Bush the winner in the key state of Ohio.

By calling the presidential race in Ohio for Bush, which would virtually assure him election to a second term, Fox News Channel and NBC put themselves at odds with the campaign of Democratic challenger John Kerry, who held out hope of eking out a razor-thin victory in Ohio once provisional votes and absentee ballots are counted.

"NBC has called Ohio for Bush, and the Kerry camp strongly disagrees," NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw said after Kerry's running mate, John Edwards, made a TV appearance to declare that the Democrats were not yet ready to throw in the towel.

Brokaw insisted that nothing NBC did could have altered the outcome of the race, since its Ohio projection came long after all the polls had closed.

He also said NBC was stopping short of proclaiming Bush the final winner of the election and acknowledged that it was possible for Kerry to turn the tide in Ohio once every last vote there had been counted.

But he added: "It's drawing to an inside straight for the Kerry campaign."

Fox News, likewise, said it was standing by its projection that Bush would emerge the winner in Ohio.

ABC, CBS and CNN declined to call Ohio as the race entered the wee hours of the morning, deciding that the margin was too close and that too many outstanding ballots remained to be counted. Still, some of NBC's rivals were clearly chafing at the bit.

"If we hadn't gone through what we went through in 2000, I suspect we would be calling this for Bush," veteran CNN analyst Jeff Greenfield said, referring to the 200 Election Night fiasco in which the networks called two different winners before deciding that a disputed outcome in Florida made the race too close to call.

Coverage of the 2004 race was far more deliberate -- replete with caution and caveats from the networks as they carefully sifted and measured every nuance of the election.

"We're not going to rush to judgment. We're going to do it the old fashioned way: Wait until 100 per cent of the precincts are in," CNN's Wolf Blitzer told viewers.

"No one's rushing to be first," said Marty Ryan, executive producer of political coverage for rival Fox News.

Invoking another of his trademark folksy metaphors when his network CBS called the swing state of Florida for Bush, Dan Rather declared that Kerry was "rapidly reaching the point where his back is to the wall and the bill collector is at the door".

Earlier, he said, "This Florida race is hotter than a Times Square Rolex" and said Bush was "sweeping the Midwest like a combine".

Some networks sought to make up for the lack of decisive projections early in the evening with a burst of Election Night pageantry, especially at NBC, where Brokaw was anchoring his last hurrah before his planned retirement next month.

NBC presented coverage from specially built glass studios overlooking Manhattan's Rockefeller Centre, where the outdoor skating rink was turned into a giant US map filled in with red and blue pieces as states were declared for either Bush or Kerry.

Adding to the dazzle of its "Democracy Plaza" set, NBC flashed giant graphics onto a 6 metres-tall video screen and turned the side of a 12-story building into a huge bar graph of electoral votes tallied for the two candidates.

Several blocks away in Times Square, CNN carried its broadcast from the site of the Nasdaq market set, projecting its Election Night data onto a bank of 96 screens, each 4.25 metres high and 20 metres wide.

- REUTERS