TV networks vow caution over speed in US election

LOS ANGELES - Television news executives, still smarting from the debacle of Election Night coverage in 2000, say their desire to be first in calling a winner will take a back seat this year to a loftier goal -- getting it right.

And for the first time in modern US politics, the networks are acknowledging in advance that the best projection to make at the end of the night next Tuesday may be simply: "Too close to call."

As one of the tightest US presidential races nears its climax in a virtual dead heat according to the polls, the major networks have pledged greater caution in reporting the results of the battle between Republican President George W. Bush and Democratic Sen. John Kerry than they did four years ago.

"That definitely is our mantra -- get it right. We don't need to be first," said Linda Mason, the network executive overseeing the CBS News decision desk. "We are very aware of how messed up it was in 2000, and we don't want that to happen again. We want the public to view us with trust ... so we're going to be very careful about what we say."

Combined with an updated system for exit polling and tabulating election returns on a county-by-county basis, the news divisions of the Big Three broadcasters -- CBS, ABC, NBC -- as well as cable network rivals Fox News Channel and CNN, are emphasising a back-to-basics approach.

"Four years ago ... it was 'Florida, Florida, Florida.' This year it will be 'journalism, journalism, journalism,"' NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw said in a recent briefing outlining the steps his network is taking to ensure accuracy.

The networks' credibility was badly tarnished in 2000 when they first called the presidential race for Democrat Al Gore, then retracted that projection and later proclaimed Bush the winner. By dawn, the networks had backtracked again to report the disputed outcome in Florida had resulted in an undecided election.

One key lesson learned from that experience was that it is OK to declare a race a toss-up, independent media analyst Andrew Tyndall said on Tuesday.

"It isn't a failure to say it's too close to call," Tyndall said. "Too close to call is now a legitimate way of calling a state."

In one measure to curb the temptation to follow the lead of competitors, NBC plans to "isolate" its projections team by keeping TV monitors out of the room of its decision desk.

Fox News, which helped spark the initial rally of network rollbacks four years ago by being first to declare Bush the winner in Florida, said it, too, would quarantine its decision desk this year.

CBS, on the other hand, is moving its decision desk into its Election Night studio to enhance communication between the people calling the race and those reporting it on the air.

ABC has adopted a new rule requiring at a margin of at least 1 percentage point between candidates before proclaiming a winner in any state, even if all or most precincts are reporting, ABC News decision desk chief Dan Merkle said.

Warnings of voter fraud, court challenges to vote counts in key states and other election irregularities also will be a big part of the story this year. And those factors are expected to keep viewers up well into the early hours of Wednesday.

"The earliest we're going to get off the air is 2am (EST) (7pm NZT), but that would be overly optimistic," CNN Washington bureau chief David Bohrman said. "I would be stunned if we had a call (on the election winner) by 11pm."

At the same time, all network news divisions have expressed greater confidence in their ability to accurately report this year's election, thanks in large part to a revamped system for tabulating raw vote counts, conducting exit polls and collecting sample precinct tallies.

The National Election Pool, formed last year to replace the now-defunct Voter News Service whose faulty data was widely blamed for bungled election coverage in 2000, also has devised updated computer models for projecting results.

- REUTERS