TAUZIN RULES OUT INTENTIONAL BIAS IN NETWORK ELECTION CALLS
House Commerce Committee Chmn. Tauzin (R-La.) scaled back his charges against 5 national TV networks Thurs., saying his investigators had “found no evidence of intentionally misleading or biased reporting” by ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC in their coverage of presidential election results last Nov. But Tauzin, in news conference with 3 House Republican colleagues, said his investigators had found “clear evidence of statistical, if unintentional, bias” in Voter News Service (VNS) data models and vote counts used by networks that favored Democrats on election night. As result, he plans to proceed with Feb. 14 committee hearing on network election coverage, at which heads of 5 news networks, VNS and Associated Press (AP) are expected to testify. “Our goal is simple -- find out what went wrong and try to fix it,” he said. “This system bit Democrats in the past and we think it bit Republicans this year.”
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Tauzin said he also intended to reach new agreement with major networks that would keep them from reporting each state’s election results until all polls in that state closed. He cited Fla. and Ky. as examples of states with 2 time zones where networks called presidential race before polls in western time zone shut. But he stressed that he and other committee members wouldn’t push any bill telling networks how to cover elections. “We're not going to legislate content in broadcasting,” he said. “I'd fight that vigorously. We want a new agreement.”
Along with Reps. Cox (R-Cal.) and Burr (R-N.C.), Tauzin said he would push Congress to pass bill creating uniform closing time for polls across U.S. in national elections. While similar legislation passed House in 1985, it never advanced through Senate. Tauzin and Cox argued that prospects for passage had improved since then because of early projection problems in both 1980 and 2000 presidential races and recent move toward alternative voting methods in several states. “The prospects are much improved,” Cox said. “I think the country is ready for this.”
Tauzin said his staff still was “examining questions of antitrust” law violations by networks in all relying on VNS for key election data. But he said he “can understand why the networks all went to a single service in 1990” to track election results, citing congressional concerns about “overzealous competition” by networks and network desires to cut expenses. “Finding a system that doesn’t rely on competition will be one of the goals of our hearing,” he said.
News conference came several hours after last of 5 major networks, ABC, submitted report on its internal investigation into election night snafus that led all networks to project Fla. poll results incorrectly or prematurely twice in 7 hours. In 21-page statement delivered to Tauzin’s office, ABC acknowledged its “flawed projections” in Fla. race, blaming problems on several miscues by VNS, including incorrect raw vote data from one county, mistaken estimates of Fla. absentee vote, flawed exit poll data and use of wrong past race as model for presidential contest. “VNS has a long and enviable track record of accuracy in projecting races over the years,” ABC said. “In the November election, however, VNS fell short.”
As result of its internal probe, ABC pledged that it would take several steps to improve its election projections, including: (1) Project winner in each state only after last scheduled poll closing time in state. (2) Support uniform national poll closing time and efforts to reform balloting processes. (3) Make projections only if they are justified by its independent analysis of data and relevant statistical models. (4) Explain to viewers that its projections are “informed, statistically based estimates of the probable results of elections.” (5) Take “all reasonable steps to insulate” its projection experts from competitive pressures. (6) Use voting data from AP and possibly other sources to check its projections. (7) Support “a continuing comprehensive review of and improvement in the operation of VNS, including improvements in the collection of data, reporting of data and application of statistical models to those data.”
Tauzin said parallel investigations by his staff and networks had “discovered a lot more” problems with VNS data than reported earlier, including incorrect vote counts and reliance on outdated projection models despite vast demographic changes in last 30 years. Although probes found “no intentional efforts to slant these models,” he said, “nonetheless, they're slanted. The bottom line is they still produced a statistically biased result.”
Invited witness list for next week’s hearing includes: (1) CBS News Pres. Andrew Heyward. (2) Fox News Chmn.-CEO Roger Ailes. (3) AP Pres.-CEO Louis Boccardi. (4) ABC News Pres. David Westin. (5) NBC News Pres. Andrew Lack. (5) CNN Chmn.-CEO Tom Johnson. (6) CNN report authors Ben Wattenberg, Joan Konner and James Risser. (7) CBS report consultant Kathleen Jamieson. (8) NBC report consultant Tom Goldstein. (9) Representative of Research Triangle Institute, which conducted independent study of VNS.