Media and the US elections: Who called it first?

Posted by ednathan on November 9, 2008 · Leave a Comment

by Ednathan Thadeu Andrada
nathanandrada.wordpress.com

The smoke has cleared and the United States just elected Democratic nominee Barack Obama as the 44^th president and also the first-ever African-American to hold the Oval Office. I spent the entire morning watching the coverage of the US elections. My cable provider has CNN, Fox News, BBC, CNBC (NBC’s affiliate), and Al Jazeera, and all these media outfits carried the election almost every second most especially by the time the first polling station closed at 8:30am here in Manila.

I was mostly toggling between the American networks CNN, Fox News, and CNBC. It was amazing to see how CNN pulled off that hologram stunt streaming a female reporter from Grant Park in Chicago to the CNN headquarters in Atlanta just as if Wolf Blitzer and the reporter were just talking face to face. If you missed it, just remember Star Wars when Luke Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi opened the device that showed the hologram of Princess Leia pleading for help.

Fox News made a few blunders when their election map proved to be unreliable at times and when they inadvertently called Ohio for Obama much earlier than they should. Fox News anchor Brit Hume was quick to recall the projection though.

NBC was for me, the winner of the election coverage as they were almost always the first to make a projection. Fox News comes at close second and CNN last. Despite their massive resources, CNN were a bit too risk-averse in making projections. It should be known though that despite the difference, all three simultaneously called the elections for Obama when the California polls closed at noon, Manila time.

Filed under Opinion · Tagged with

Disclaimer: PinoyBlogoSphere.com(PBS) claims no credit for any content(posts, articles, texts, images, videos) featured on this site unless otherwise noted. All contents are copyright to their owners/sources. PBS is in no way responsible for or has control of the content of any external web site links. Information on this site may contain errors or inaccuracies; we do not make warranty as to the correctness or reliability of the site’s content. If you own rights to any of the content, and do not wish them to appear on this site, please contact us via e-mail and they will be removed.