Fox News and Election 2000 [from Fahrenheit 9/11]
The film shows CBS and CNN calling Florida for Al Gore. According to the narrator, "Then something called the Fox News Channel called the election in favor of the other guy….All of a sudden the other networks said, 'Hey, if Fox said it, it must be true.'"
We then see NBC anchor Tom Brokaw stating, "All of us networks made a mistake and projected Florida in the Al Gore column. It was our mistake."
Moore thus creates the false impression that the networks withdrew their claim about Gore winning Florida when they heard that Fox said that Bush won Florida.
In fact, the networks which called Florida for Gore did so early in the evening—before polls had even closed in the Florida panhandle, which is part of the Central Time Zone. NBC called Florida for Gore at 7:49:40 p.m., Eastern Time. This was 10 minutes before polls closed in the Florida panhandle. Thirty seconds later, CBS called Florida for Gore. And at 7:52 p.m., Fox called Florida for Gore. Moore never lets the audience know that Fox was among the networks which made the error of calling Florida for Gore prematurely. Then at 8:02 p.m., ABC called Florida for Gore. Only ABC had waited until the Florida polls were closed.
About an hour before the polls closed in panhandle Florida, the networks called the U.S. Senate race in favor of the Democratic candidate. The networks seriously compounded the problem because from 6-7 Central Time, they repeatedly announced that polls had closed in Florida--even though polls were open in the panhandle. (See also Joan Konner, James Risser & Ben Wattenberg, Television's Performance on Election Night 2000: A Report for CNN, Jan. 29, 2001.)
The false announcements that the polls were closed, as well as the premature calls (the Presidential race ten minutes early; the Senate race an hour early), may have cost Bush thousands of votes from the conservative panhandle, as discouraged last-minute voters heard that their state had already been decided; some last-minute voters on their way to the polling place turned around and went home. Other voters who were waiting in line left the polling place. In Florida, as elsewhere, voters who have arrived at the polling place before closing time often end up voting after closing time, because of long lines. The conventional wisdom of politics is that supporters of the losing candidate are most likely to give up on voting when they hear that their side has already lost. Thus, on election night 1980, when incumbent President Jimmy Carter gave a concession speech while polls were still open on the west coast, the early concession was blamed for costing the Democrats several Congressional seats in the West, such as that of 20-year incumbent James Corman. The fact that all the networks had declared Reagan a landslide winner while west coast voting was still in progress was also blamed for Democratic losses in the West; Congress even held hearings about prohibiting the disclosure of exit polls before voting had ended in the any of the 48 contiguous states.
Even if the premature television calls affected all potential voters equally, the effect was to reduce Republican votes significantly, because the Florida panhandle is a Republican stronghold. Most of Central Time Zone Florida is in the 1st Congressional District, which is known as the "Redneck Riviera." In that district, Bob Dole beat Bill Clinton by 69,000 votes in 1996, even though Clinton won the state by 300,000 votes. So depress overall turnout in the panhandle, and you will necessarily depress more Republican than Democratic votes. A 2001 study by John Lott suggested that the early calls cost Bush at least 7,500 votes, and perhaps many more. Another study reported that the networks reduced panhandle turn-out by about 19,000 votes, costing Bush about 12,000 votes and Gore about 7,000 votes.
At 10:00 p.m., which networks took the lead in retracting the premature Florida win for Gore? They were CNN and CBS, not Fox. (The two networks were using a shared Decision Team.) See Linda Mason, Kathleen Francovic & Kathleen Hall Jamieson, "CBS News Coverage of Election Night 2000: Investigation, Analysis, Recommendations" (CBS News, Jan. 2001), pp. 12-25.)
In fact, Fox did not retract its claim that Gore had won Florida until 2 a.m.--four hours after other networks had withdrawn the call.
Over four hours later, at 2:16 a.m., Fox projected Bush as the Florida winner, as did all the other networks by 2:20 a.m.
At 3:59 a.m., CBS took the lead in retracting the Florida call for Bush. All the other networks, including Fox, followed the CBS lead within eight minutes. That the networks arrived at similar conclusions within a short period of time is not surprising, since they were all using the same data from the Voter News Service. (Mason, et al. "CBS News Coverage.") As the CBS timeline details, throughout the evening all networks used VNS data to call states, even though VNS had not called the state; sometimes the network calls were made hours ahead of the VNS call.
Moore’s editing technique of the election night segment is typical of his style: all the video clips are real clips, and nothing he says is, narrowly speaking, false. But notice how he says, "Then something called the Fox News Channel called the election in favor of the other guy…" The impression created is that the Fox call of Florida for Bush came soon after the CBS/CNN calls of Florida for Gore, and that Fox caused the other networks to change ("All of a sudden the other networks said, 'Hey, if Fox said it, it must be true.'")
This is the essence of the Moore technique: cleverly blending half-truths to deceive the viewer.
sourceThe movie then shows selected scenes from television coverage on the night of the 2000 election, giving the impression that everything was heading in Gore’s direction, with state after state going for him until the end. But in fact, even leaving aside Florida, Bush won 29 states that night, and Gore won 20 states and the District of Columbia.
Moore then shows CBS calling Florida for Gore. He does not mention that this call was made by CBS and several other TV networks before polls had actually closed in the part of Florida that is in the Central time zone—the Western panhandle, which leans heavily Republican. Since 1980, the networks have all agreed not to call election results in any state before the polls close in that state, but in the case of Florida in 2000 they violated this agreement. The networks’ premature call—together with the fact that they repeatedly and wrongly announced during the final hour that the polls in Florida were closed—certainly cost Bush a good number of votes in that heavily Republican area. There is evidence from the 361 polling places in the Central time zone that voters didn’t show up as expected in the final hour, either because they were misled into believing the polls were already closed, or because they were convinced that their votes would not matter since Gore was already being reported as the winner in Florida. This depressed turnout very likely led to the close election result we’re all familiar with. One study (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=276278) suggests the networks’ error cost Bush about 1,500 Florida votes, and another (http://www.senate.gov/~gov_affairs/050301_Perrin.htm) suggests it cost him 5,000. In either case, or any similar case, the tight race fiasco would not have happened without the TV news mistake, and Bush would have won Florida without dispute. This point is not raised in the film.
Moore then shows several networks calling the state for Gore, but then says that “something called the Fox News Channel called the election in favor of the other guy.” What really happened, however, is that the TV networks soon realized that Florida was too close to call, and never should have been put in the Gore category. So beginning with CNN at 9:55 p.m. EST, and quickly followed by CBS and the others, the TV news networks retracted their mistaken call for Gore. (For the CNN retraction: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20001108/aponline183922_000.htm. For a useful timeline of election-night “calls” by the networks: http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/c2k/pdf/REPFINAL.pdf.) Fox News, like the other networks, had wrongly called Florida for Gore even before the polls were closed. They did not call the state for Bush until after 2 a.m., four hours after CNN and CBS had led the way in retracting the call for Gore. Moore is correct to say that Fox was the first to actually announce a call for Bush at 2:16 a.m., but the other networks all followed within moments. Moore works hard to build the impression that everyone believed Gore had won until Fox said otherwise, which is blatantly false."
...
"Having sought to convince us (without actually offering facts) that Florida was somehow taken from Gore, Moore says “How does someone like Bush get away with something like this?” and then suggests it is because his brother was Florida’s governor, and because Florida’s secretary of state (whom Moore calls “the vote counting woman”) was an elected Republican who was co-chair of Bush’s Florida campaign. He alleges no specific wrongdoing on either person’s part. The extent of his accusation against Bush’s brother is footage of Bush sitting with his brother before the election and saying he will win Florida (just as Al Gore said he would win Florida in the footage that opened the movie). In fact, Jeb Bush recused himself from everything having to do with the vote-count in Florida, to avoid any appearance of impropriety, so although he would normally have been the one in charge of the final post-election certification process, he remained completely out of it, and has never been accused by anyone of doing anything wrong (http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/11/08/election.president/).
Katherine Harris, “the vote counting woman,” was the elected Secretary of State of Florida. She was not in charge of “vote counting,” which is overseen by county officials in each of Florida’s counties, and so was done by Democrats in each of the disputed counties in the 2000 election. Harris, as secretary of state and one of three members of the state’s Elections Canvassing Commission, was only in charge of certifying the vote-count after it was completed, which she did. In any case, she too is not accused in the movie or elsewhere of wrongdoing. The movie makes no charges, only insinuations, but suggests that Bush “got away” with something (it does not say what) because these people were in power. That certainly puts forward a grossly misleading impression at the very least.
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