Richard Rankin Russell's election-coverage analysis ("Media's Election Coverage Indicative of Liberal Bias, Lack of Professionalism" Nov. 14) is seriously flawed.
Citing the news media's early Florida call as evidence of a liberal bias betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the Election Night news-reporting process. All of the major networks employ the nonpartisan Voter News Service to provide them with election-return data. The VNS uses state-of-the-art statistical models, based on exit poll data as well as early returns from precincts, to predict the winner of each state.
The model doesn't care which candidate is the Democrat and which is the Republican; nor do the journalists, who undertake the delicate balancing act between the competitive pressure to be first with a call and the obligation not to jump the gun.
As all of the networks have conceded, the model was dead wrong in predicting Florida. However, no serious analyst has ever suggested that, if the model had indicated a Bush victory, the networks would have suppressed the news.
That the early Florida call "borders on criminal" by potentially depressing turnout in other time zones not only is crass hyperbole, but it is contradicted by a wealth of political and media scholarship that finds a link between early calls and turnout only when the election is deemed "over" (even then, the link is very weak). Anyone who actually watched this year's coverage will remember that Florida was a "must-win" state to keep Gore competitive. The tone of the subsequent coverage was that of a "tight race," which if anything should have increased turnout.
Finally, citing two single episodes of coverage as evidence of a general "liberal bias" in the media is another pedestrian logical flaw that insults the scholars who endeavor to provide a systematic answer to this concern.
Adam Schiffer
Graduate Student
Political Science
