Waugh on the media: News from Florida and Ishmaelia
Baumann, Paul
PAUL BAUNANN WAUGH ON THE MEDIA Get it first, then get it right Istarted watching the returns early election night. Consequently, I heard Dan Rather, CBS's king of cornpone, begin the...
...Is the goal (agenda) of the church, while showing compassion to gays, to support research to eliminate this objective disorder through means acceptable to the church, for example, genetic surgery in utero with no adverse side effects...
...Explanations from the networks of what went wrong sound like something straight out of "Saturday Night Live...
...The rush to get on the air with only halfdigested news and to keep the public in a kind of frenzy over each candidate's prospects now seems a wholly illusory exercise...
...he proclaimed...
...Al Gore, who like most Americans believes what he sees on the TV news, called Bush and conceded...
...It is now known that the Fox News consultant who called Florida for Bush was a man named John Ellis...
...But the enormous pressure to call a tight presidential election revealed just how fallible the media have always been...
...Clearly, the round-the-clock TV news format thrives on perpetuating crisis and a stark winner/loser storyline, either real or imagined...
...Despite Rather's assurances, the clear goal of all the networks is to be the first to announce the winner of the presidential race...
...The mass media, Waugh shows, are much more interested in keeping an eye on each other than on the story they're suppose to be covering...
...A whole host of John Ellis-like characters keep popping up in the most unlikely places, while a frenzy of mindless competition among the journalists generates one absurdly false story after another '"But it's going to be a tough assignment from what I hear,'" Corker, a news-agency correspondent, tells Waugh's inexperienced hero...
...Ellis is George W. Bush's cousin...
...I am loyal to my cousin," Ellis is widely quoted as saying...
...Lemming-like, the other networks quickly followed...
...That's where I envy you—working for a paper...
...It's a Bush win " Wrong...
...I put that loyalty ahead of my loyalty to anyone else...
...Until such time as the church can move toward a more neutral stance on the interpretation of the orientation itself—at root, a difficult, but serious theological and philosophical question—most dialogue between the gay community and the church will remain one of defensive posturing ROBERT J. COMISKEY Springfield, Va The editors comment: We doubt that the official church is supporting research to eliminate gays through genetic surgery, or otherwise...
...The rest, as they say, is history—or is it comedy...
...The hallucinatory quality of this media debacle gets even better...
...Published in 1938, Scoop describes the adventures of William Boot, a hilariously inept foreign correspondent for London's Daily Beast...
...But I also agree with those who said Gore should have asked for the statewide recount first thing, so it wouldn't look like he hand-picked the counties where he expected the most support...
...Given the time pressures of TV and daily journalism, mistakes are inevitable...
...Voting rights Your stand against the bombastic activities of the Bush campaign was courageous, ("Votes Count," December 15, 2000...
...After the evening's initial blunder, you would think that all caution would be exercised before a final Florida winner was announced But if you thought that, you don't know the news biz...
...Supreme Court instructed the Florida Supreme Court to clarify its ruling allowing recounts, initial TV and Internet reports of what the high court had done were wildly contradictory and inaccurate...
...By 4 a.m...
...When the U.S...
...Consequently, I heard Dan Rather, CBS's king of cornpone, begin the evening with his now infamous promise...
...In Scoop, Evelyn Waugh drew a bitingly satirical picture of the venality, confusion, and often sheer chaos that characterize the news business...
...The call of Florida for Gore was not a mistake...
...You only have to worry about getting your story in on time for the first edition...
...The indefatigable Dan Rather broke into regular programming to announce, "The United States Supreme Court has struck down the Florida Supreme Court ruling in favor of Vice President Gore...
...Consequently, we were subjected to violent swings in the tenor of the coverage, with each step in the legal process seeming to spell doom for one candidate or the other...
...The call for Bush was not a miscalculation, it was a mistake We did it without being sure...
...The editorial echoes the sentiments of many Americans, even beyond partisanship, yet speaks volumes about our resilient, but battered democratic system of government and the primacy of the vote...
...the networks shamefacedly admitted they had gotten Florida wrong again...
...Shortly before 8 p.m., the networks, including CBS, stampeded to call Florida for Gore...
...We have to race each other all day.' "'But the papers can't use your reports any earlier than ours.' "'No, but they use the one that comes in first.' '"But if it's exactly the same as the one that came in second and third and fourth and they are all in time for the same edition ?' "Corker looked at him sadly...
...As we all know, Gore was on his way to deliver his concession speech when Democratic operatives monitoring the returns alerted him to the inconclusive vote tally...
...Such a thought sends tremors of fear and distrust into the minds and hearts of the gay community, who are already fighting an uphill battle for their legitimate place at the Lord's table...
...You know, you've got a lot to learn about journalism.'" Sometimes the news from Florida sounded uncannily like news from Ishmaelia ? 8 (Continued from page 4) it is a virtual certainty that, given the rapid advances in these fields, we will know with a high level of confidence its causes within the next several decades...
...Competition among the networks is ferocious, and the way in which competition distorts the news has never been more apparent...
...Unless there is a terrible calamity," ABC's Peter Jennings said, "George W. Bush, by our projections, is going to be the next president...
...That mistake-prone dynamic pervaded the ongoing coverage of the contested Florida vote as well...
...Waugh was deeply suspicious of the powerful 7 media of his day and what he thought was their frail grasp of reality and their eagerness to manipulate public opinion...
...DIANE LAVOS Natick, Mass...
...Book it...
...Cutthroat competition...
...Yes, the system of exit polling used for predicting winners has worked well in the past...
...Still, how the big-time media performed in the last two months is more than sobering...
...Speaking in his usual oleaginous fashion, Rather told us that CBS might not be the first network to call a particular state or race, but that being first wasn't the most important thing "If we say somebody's carried the state, you can take that to the bank...
...By 10 they had all retracted that prediction, judging the race too dose to call...
...it was a miscalculation," Fox News vice president John Moody told Time...
...Calamity did not tarry...
...NBC and the Associated Press also got it wrong...
...Despite all the hand wringing about election-night errors, the pattern of reckless reporting continued...
...I will keep a copy of your editorial with my Boston Globe from the day after the election as a reminder of the preciousness of my vote and everyone else's...
...Boot, a nature writer, is mistakenly sent to cover a civil war in the obscure African country of Ishmaelia (somewhere near Chad, we imagine...
...Shortly after 2 A.M., Fox News Channel, Rupert Murdoch's answer to "liberal media bias," declared Florida for George W. Bush and Bush as the next president...
Vol. 128 • January 2001 • No. 1
