[Media-watch] Fox News jumps gun on Ohio - MediaGuardian - 3/11/2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1342419,00.html?gusrc=ticker-103704


*Fox News jumps gun on Ohio*

*Dominic Timms and agencies
Wednesday November 3, 2004*

Fox News broke ranks with its rivals last night to call the state of Ohio 
for George Bush even before the polls had closed.

After the election debacle of 2000 the US television networks were taking a 
determinedly cautious approach to the battle between George Bush and John 
Kerry.

But despite pre-election promises to avoid rush announcements and a repeat 
of Florida in 2000 when they got the result spectacularly wrong, Rupert 
Murdoch's rightwing station called Ohio for the Republican incumbent at 
about 5.40am.

Fox called the Ohio result despite there being at least 100,000 votes to 
come in the largely Democratic Cuyahoga County, not to mention thousands of 
provisional votes still to come in from overseas.

Ninety minutes after the prediction Ohio secretary of state Ken Blackwell 
said it could take as long as 11 days to get a final result in the state.

ABC, CNN and CBS declined to follow Fox's lead.

NBC, however, followed suit just minutes later, calling Ohio for Bush 
despite pre-election promises that it would take a much more measured 
approach to "calling" states.

"The real race is to get it right, not to be first," Bill Wheatley, the 
vice-president of NBC news, said on the eve of the poll.

In the 2000 battle between Al Gore and George Bush, the networks famously 
said Mr Gore had won Florida and almost certainly the White House, only to 
retract the result less than an hour later.

"I not only have egg on my face, I have an entire omelette all over my 
suit," was how NBC news anchor Tom Bradshaw famously tried to explain away 
the broadcasting faux pas.