Passing this along from FAIR
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FAIR-L
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and news reports
ACTION ALERT:
Crucial Media Role in Recount Debate
November 16, 2000
Rarely have the U.S. media had a more important role to play in the nation's
democratic process.
The election of the nation's next president appears to hang on the outcome
in the single state of Florida. The Florida vote, in turn, may well hinge
on whether or not hand recounts are conducted in some or all of the state's
counties.
Essentially, this confusing election boils down to one issue: whether or not
hand recounts will provide a more accurate count of the people's votes in
Florida. Everyone agrees that the most accurate vote possible is necessary.
But the two leading candidates make sharply different claims about how to
achieve this.
According to Vice President Al Gore, "Machines can sometimes misread of fail
to detect the way ballots are cast. And when there are serious doubts,
checking the machine count with a careful hand count is accepted far and
wide as the best way to know the true intentions of the voters."
Governor George W. Bush asserts the opposite: "Manual counting, with
individuals making subjective decisions about voter intent, introduces human
error and politics into the vote-counting process. Each time these voting
cards are handled, the potential for errors multiplies. Additional manual
recounts of votes that have been counted and recounted will make the process
less accurate, not more so."
This issue, upon which the fate of the election hangs, is too important to
be reported in terms of partisan charges and counter-charges. Yet this is
how the issue has been covered in the media, particularly on the network
newscasts. Despite pledges to "cut through all the smoke and spin" (CBS
Evening News, 11/14/00), television coverage has not done so thus far. There
has been very little discussion of the core issue-- whether hand counts or
machine counts are the most accurate method of gauging the will of the
electorate. Coverage that relies on language like "score one for the
Democrats" (ABC World News Tonight, 11/15/00) does a disservice to viewers.
This is a question that calls for careful and independent reporting on the
part of all media outlets. The findings of such investigations should be
reported at least as prominently as the latest claims being made by the
candidates' camps.
This is a critical moment for American democracy. The question of which
candidate wins the state of Florida--and the White House-- may well depend
on how well the media do their job. On November 15, ABC's Peter Jennings
summed up the state of affairs this way: "It may be a civics lesson, but
it's also a circus." Responsible media coverage could clarify the issue.
ACTION: Please contact network news outlets and ask them to independently
investigate whether a manual recount is more or less likely to produce an
accurate count of people's votes. Ask them to report the results of this
investigation prominently.
CONTACT:
NBC Nightly News
Phone: 212-664-4971 or 202-885-4259
Fax: 202-362-2009
mailto:Nightly@nbc.com
ABC World News Tonight
Phone: 212-456-4040
Fax: 212-456-2795
mailto:netaudr@abc.com
CBS Evening News
Phone: 212-975-3691, 202-457-4385
Fax: 212-975-1893
mailto:audsvcs@cbs.com
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