Interesting difference between MSNBC and FoxNews on elections

[laurence]

Last night when I went to bed, MSNBC had the Dems up 33 seats in the house, Fox News had them up 20. MSNBC posted it in large font as "+33!" and Fox News did it "House +5". MSNBC talked about "the wave" and Fox News had pundits saying, "Well, Dems better fix everything in 2 years that Republicans broke in the last 12 or they are worthless.". Fox News declared Corker's win in Tenessee a good 45 minutes before MSNBC did, and even when every vote counted MSNBC equivocated for quite some time, "with 100% counted Corker has more votes, but we aren't declaring a winner."(?).

It was interesting to see how the dismantling of objective journalism has led to parallel universes on different "news" channels, even with something like an election with an easy to read scoreboard. My guess is Fox News didn't want to dishearten their base and keep them feeling competitive for the upcoming '08 Presidential election. MSNBC was just playing to their crowd and popping the bubbly.

[lets-retire]

Each of the news channels did similar reporting in the 2004 elections.

[BigMoneyJim]

I was switching back and forth between CNN and MSNBC. Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan had a lot of screen time and aren't exactly bleeding heart liberals.

I didn't dare tune over to Fox News. I probably would've gone into convulsions. I pinged a couple of different websites, though.

[Caroline]

Three letters. PBS.

[astromeria]

I liked the graphics better on Fox (excpet for that bizarre football manoeuvre-looking thing they kept doing, where no matter how many Replublican circles kept getting pointed to the Democratic side, there were always more R circles than D circles on the board ) . Since I take in information better visually than aurally, once I got home from the (Democratic, therefore happy) party I went to, I mostly watched Fox. I watched local ETV for state news.

My brother lost his mayoral election, as expected, but given that the incumbent spent millions and my brother was new on the poltical scene 2 and ahalf months ago, he did well. Approx results when I spoke to him around 10pm:
Democrat--4200 votes
me bruddah (Independent progressive)--2400 votes
Republican--200 votes.

[Nords]

Originally Posted by astromeria

My brother lost his mayoral election, as expected, but given that the incumbent spent millions and my brother was new on the poltical scene 2 and ahalf months ago, he did well. Approx results when I spoke to him around 10pm:
Democrat--4200 votes
me bruddah (Independent progressive)--2400 votes
Republican--200 votes.

Those numbers look familiar-- he'll feel right at home in Hawaii!

[Brat]

Looking for relief from the constant political speculation I tuned to CSPAN yesterday for a while (haven't spent time there in years). I caught a very interesting presentation by the CATO Institute. Thoughtfull commentary about how we got into Iraq and the execution of the war.

[d]

i too was switching back and forth ... fox noted early-on, and often, that they would not be making projections based on exit polls given their unreliability in past elections ... thus (i think) the big differences.