Prudence in election coverage is preferable to jumping the gun. Still, as the night wore on, anchors seemed ready for answers. Fox News brought on its politics editor, Chris Stirewalt, several times to explain the reluctance of the network’s data team to project battleground winners. It turned into a good-natured grilling session.
“Our call will hold, we feel very confident,” Mr. Stirewalt said after his team’s early projection that Mr. Biden would take Virginia.
On MSNBC, Steve Kornacki frantically worked his interactive map to work out scenarios that would allow Mr. Biden to win the election without taking Pennsylvania.
“That is crazy,” said Rachel Maddow, MSNBC’s highest-rated anchor, as she looked on. “I mean, I have done that math myself, and I know it’s true, but I can’t believe we’re talking about it as one of the things that might actually happen.”
Election 2020 ›
How to Follow the Election Results
Here’s a guide to The Times’s election night coverage, no matter when, how or how often you want to consume it.
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- If you just want results… There will be a results map on The Times’s home page, and yes, the infamous needle will be back — but only for Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, the only states providing granular enough information for our experts to make educated projections of uncounted votes.
- If you want constant updates… Times reporters are live-blogging all day and night. This will be your one-stop shop for minute-by-minute updates: race calls, on-the-ground reporting from swing states, news about any voting issues or disruptions, and more.
- If you want to check in every so often… Times journalists are also producing a live briefing from roughly 5 p.m. to 3 a.m. ET, with an overview of what’s happening in the presidential race, the Senate and House races, and the voting process itself.
Before the evening began, major media polls had shown Mr. Biden with a narrow lead in several key states, and some producers had game-planned how to handle a situation in which Mr. Trump, down in the count, tried to declare a premature victory.
Instead, the early results prompted conversations about why the polls had seemed to miss some of the night’s emerging trends.
On MSNBC, a destination for ardent critics of the president, the anchor Nicolle Wallace argued that her colleagues’ focus on North Carolina was wrong, just as the state appeared to be tilting toward Mr. Trump. “We shouldn’t pull our viewers into dramas that aren’t necessary,” Ms. Wallace said, calling the state a “sideshow.”
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/03/business/media/media-coverage-election-night.html
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