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Politics : Right Wing Extremist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Carolyn who wrote (4860)	2/14/2001 9:50:04 AM
From: Tom Clarke	Respond to of 59480

....or an agent for the Illuminati.

To: Carolyn who wrote (4860)	2/14/2001 10:29:17 AM
From: KLP	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 59480

Have you seen this this AM? News execs will swear today Note: Stupid headline....If they wanted to they should have added "again"....that would have been more believable....but I know all of us are certainly glad they are promising not make those calls early again... (especially wrong, and possibly rigged ones) Wednesday February 14 12:21 AM EST News execs will swear today By Brooks Boliek dailynews.yahoo.com WASHINGTON (The Hollywood Reporter) --- Even though broadcast and cable network executives have pledged to make changes designed to prevent a repeat of their Election Night snafus, they will have to swear to it during a congressional hearing today. The hearing before the House Commerce Committee completes an investigation into what led to the early calls by the networks that Al Gore had won Florida -- a call they later retracted, giving the state to George W. Bush. The networks later retracted that call. While committee chairman Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., has determined that the mistakes were made not as a result of any intentional bias but because of faulty data and competitive pressures, he does not want to let the networks off lightly. Hence, he will have them sworn in -- just like the panel did with tobacco company executives and execs from Ford and Firestone. The move had some network executives and lawmakers complaining that the chairman was overstepping his authority. After all, they argue, the sloppy reporting was embarrassing not fatal. "It has nothing to do with sending anyone to jail," one congressional source said. "It's not Firestone or tobacco, so what's the point? Since there's no bias, it's really about how you run a news operation." Network executives said they resisted the chairman's demand for them to speak under oath but conceded in the end. They will not be sworn in as a group a la the tobacco hearings, but one by one. "We didn't want to look like we were the tobacco companies," one executive said. "Our view is that we recognize we made mistakes and have pledged to make changes so it won't happen again." Tauzin spokesman Ken Johnson defended the practice. "Nightly news reporters would have been among the first criticizing us if we let (Ford CEO) Jacques Nassar off the hook by not swearing him in," Johnson said. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander. This is no intent to embarrass anyone." The hearings also come on the heels of several harsh internal reviews of the networks' Election Night coverage. CNN's review said competitive pressure among the networks to be the first to project a winner in each state led news operations "to unwisely make calls based on sketchy and sometimes mistaken information." Other lawmakers on the Commerce Committee largely agreed with those findings. The networks' unanimous reliance on Voter News Service for the Election Night data also was problematic because it does not allow for independent confirmation of the consortium's data, Tauzin has said. "A clear tenet of journalism is two clear, objective sources," he said. Congress might soon consider several measures designed to prevent the 2000 election fiasco from repeating, including one from Tauzin and Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., that would establish a national poll-closing time. All six broadcast and cable news operations have promised to refrain from calling a state for a candidate until all polling places are closed statewide, and many have endorsed a national poll closing like the one backed by Tauzin and Markey. Those testifying at Tauzin's hearing include ABC News president David Westin, NBC News president Andrew Lack, CNN chairman Tom Johnson, CBS News president Andrew Heyward, Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, Voter News Service director Ted Savaglio and Associated Press president Louis Boccardi.