News agencies are aware of the need to explain election reporting
6 mins read

News agencies are aware of the need to explain election reporting

The Associated Press will have thousands of people on hand next week to count votes and announce the winners and losers of the US election, continuing a tradition that began in 1848.

It’s an even bigger priority this year explain that process to outsiders.

The AP has already run a series of stories detailing how it all works, and has a team of reporters who will be tasked on election night with writing in plain text why it is “calling” key individual states for presidential candidates Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.

Similar plans are underway at other news organizations. At the AP, editors are alert to political misinformation and polls that reveal a growing distrust of the media, said Julie PaceSenior Vice President and Executive Editor.

“I can’t get people to trust us,” Pace said. “But we have spent an incredible amount of time, energy and resources on getting after just that. We take it very seriously.”

Several news organizations are trying to explain things

NBC News has posted explanatory stories on its website — one, for example, telling readers how exit polls work and how the network will use them. The New York Times has promised more information will follow with one of its most popular election night online features, the needlewhich fluctuates as it measures the probability of which presidential candidate wins.

On the air, ABC News has run one Protect your voice series, which has profiled election workers, explained why there are fewer polling stations and introduced people caught up in election processes.

CNN is also publishing a series of articles explaining the projection process and exit polls, and providing advice on how people should follow election night coverage. It is too make a version of its “Magic Wall” available online, so viewers can have the same access to statistics and historical comparisons as correspondents John King has in the air.

AP’s election night role i counting the vote is unique, built on the assumption that although individual jurisdictions report agreements, there is no federal agency that can pull it all together.

The process involves almost 5,000 people and the data is widely used in the news industry. Stringers collects results directly from local governments across the country and transmits them to a voter entry center, where the numbers are collated and checked against online sources. Separately, the news organization — like the major television networks — calling individual races leverage actual results, exit polls and historical trends.

The rule for picking a winner is simple: “We call the race when there’s no way the trailing candidate can catch up,” Pace said. In 2020, news channels declared Joe Biden the winner over Trump on the Saturday after Election Day.

The AP expects to make calls this year in 6,832 individual races, from the president down to local elections and ballot measures.

Why do you call – and why don’t you call?

A dozen journalists have been assigned to write stories and live blog posts explaining the specific factors involved in making calls in the key presidential primary states and other closely watched races. It’s a test for writers: It requires both technical knowledge and an ability to convey that information clearly and quickly.

It’s also important to keep people updated when a race is too close or there are other factors holding back a call.

“It is absolutely essential for an organization to be as transparent as possible, especially since there has been an attempt to challenge the credibility of conversations,” said Mark Lukasiewiczdean of Hofstra University’s School of Communication and a longtime NBC News producer. At the same time, it’s hard to do in a way that makes sense to people who aren’t statisticians or experts in system operations, he said.

AP was correct in all of its calls for president, congress and governors in the 2020 race, an overall accuracy rate of 99.9%.

Still, then-President Trump and his supporters were enraged when Fox News Channel and the AP reported Biden as the winner in the key state of Arizona well ahead of other news organizations. The call was found to be correct but it raised suspicions about the voting process. Fox, in particular, faced one huge setback from their viewers.

There is a direct line from that episode to the AP’s push to be more systematic and thorough in its explanatory efforts this year, Pace said.

“We need to get better and faster at explaining what’s happening in those moments rather than saying, ‘We’re AP, we’re 99% accurate, of course we’re right,'” she said.

Only about a quarter of Republicans say they have either “a lot” or “somewhat” confidence that votes will be counted accurately across the country, according to a poll released last Friday by Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. About three-quarters of Democrats reported the same level of confidence.

Don’t overlook routine things that can become stories

Journalists also need to be aware that even small things that happen routinely during elections—numbers incorrectly transferred to a vote tally, or broken voting machines resulting in extended hours at some polling places—are stories that need to be reported in order to do so. not blown up in conspiracy theories.

In the end, the elections in the United States have been incredibly well conducted, Pace said.

“My hope is that if people are confused about what’s going to happen here, what’s going on behind the scenes, we’ve been very transparent,” she said. “Everything is there. Everything is accessible to people.

“I’m not naive enough to think that putting it out there will quell any skepticism about elections or stomp out all the misinformation, but it’s an incredibly robust effort to make sure that fact-based explanatory information about elections is out there.”

The AP experimented with more of this material early in the election season and it proved popular with readers. “It reinforced for us that this is something we should do,” she said.

___

Republished with permission of the Associated Press.


Post Views: 0