Column: Television networks put credibility on line, and lost

Maybe now, after 52 years, the Chicago Tribune is finally off the hook.

It was the Tribune, held up by Harry Truman in the famous photo, that made the wrong call on Nov. 4, 1948. "Dewey defeats Truman," the newspaper trumpeted.

Wrong.

Well, on the night of Nov. 7, 2000, and into the morning of Nov. 8, a lot of newspapers made the wrong call. Of course, they weren't nearly as wrong as the news networks, most of whom got it wrong at least a couple of times during the course of the evening.

The Chicago Tribune has been vilified for decades for the gaffe. Every time somebody wants to dredge up an example of a big mistake by a newspaper, they print the photo of Harry Truman holding up the Tribune's front page.

Let me point out right here that not everybody got it wrong.

The stodgy, conservative Associated Press - traditionally the last to go out on a limb in making election predictions - never said anything Tuesday night or Wednesday morning other than "it's too close to call."

The Associated Press got it right.

Here's one reason. The AP subscribes to that oldest of adages in journalism: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out."

In other words, AP isn't willing to report something it can't verify on its own. Don't take someone's word for it, says the rules of Journalism 101. Make sure it's accurate before you send it out under your byline.

So for hour after hour Tuesday night, while ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, Fox and everybody else who was sitting in front of a television camera seemed only too willing to declare a winner between Al Gore and George Bush, the Associated Press kept sending story after story that refused to say something its editors and reporters didn't know.

Believe me, it was frustrating.

The Nevada Appeal, like lots of newspapers around the country, depend on Associated Press for national news. At 1 a.m., with about 15 minutes to make a decision on what the main headline in the Appeal would say, I was swearing at AP.

"Call the election, dammit!" I was saying. "AP is being way too conservative. They won't call the race!"

So we looked at another news service to which the Appeal subscribes, Scripps Howard. Sure enough, Scripps Howard had a story saying that Bush had won. Our front page was on its way with a headline saying, "Bush wins a squeaker."

In the next 10 minutes, the TV networks began reporting that Gore had withdrawn his concession. Bush's lead in Florida was slipping away as votes were actually counted - what a concept - and that the race again was too close to call.

With five minutes to deadline, we went back to Scripps Howard. Fortunately, the news service was on the ball and was sending a new story that reflected the closeness of the race. We substituted that story on the Appeal's front page and tacked a question mark onto our headline. That's the way it read on Wednesday morning: "Bush wins a squeaker?"

Other newspapers weren't so fortunate. With earlier deadlines, editors made a decision to go with what they had. If Associated Press was all they had, they made the right decision. Many, like the New York Post, went with "Bush wins!"

The Reno Gazette-Journal went both ways - sometimes in the same edition. Because the newspapers it sends to Carson City are printed a couple hours ahead of those in Reno, the copy we got said "Too close to call" on the front page. If you turn to Page 12, however, it carries a story that says flatly, "Republican George W. Bush won election as the 43rd U.S. president by topping Democrat Al Gore in the closest race in 40 years." So it was a little hard to tell what the Gazette-Journal's editors were thinking.

The Gazette-Journal that Reno residents received went with the "Bush wins" theme.

The difference between newspapers and television networks on Tuesday night was that TV news was trying to predict the results in order to be first. Newspapers were trying to report what happened.

''We don't just have egg on our face,'' said Tom Brokaw of NBC. ''We have an omelette.''

That's very troubling to me, and I think it's troubling to many people. In their rush to be first, the TV networks rushed to be wrong.

There's no coincidence in the fact that four minutes after Fox reported Bush had won Florida, the same thing was reported by ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN. Did they know? Did they check it out? I think they were reporting it as news merely because somebody else is reporting it as news.

''It's competitive,'' pollster John Zogby said on Fox News Channel. ''One network does it and it creates a panic among the other networks.''

That's a dangerous practice in journalism, and it is widespread.

Here's another basic lesson from Journalism 101, a lesson that readers should know in order to judge the credibility of any media. It's called "attribution."

Seldom do television news programs attribute their information to anyone. You can listen to whole broadcasts without hearing the words "according to." But the only way for viewers to judge the accuracy of information is to know where it originated. And it doesn't do any good to say "according to pollsters" or "according to experts." That flunks the Journalism 101 test.

If they don't attribute the information, then the networks are sending a message they are the ones making the news - instead of reporting the news. They kind of like it that way, because it makes them seem more important than they really are.

In doing so, they put their credibility on the line. In my opinion, they lost that credibility Tuesday night.

For 52 years, the Chicago Tribune has lived with the "Dewey defeates Truman" headline. The TV networks should have to live with their mistakes for at least that long.

Barry Smith is managing editor of the Nevada Appeal.