The Voter News Service and the 2000 election night calls

After examining the rhetoric of the network broadcast coverage on election night 2000. it is concluded that although individual "decision desk" call t imes were nor identical across networks, there was a consistent pattern of correct and incorrect calls. The language of the election night broadcasts undercut network credibility on two counts. First, the networks largely fai led to acknowledge their common reliance on the Voter News Service for thei r information creating the impression that independent research by the five different networks war producing identical calls. Second, the networks fai led to adequately describe how the calls were being made and the limitation s of predictive models in a close election.