Chat Transcript: Media Critic Marvin Kalb (Nov. 14, 2000)
Nov. 14 -- Among the questions still unresolved on Election Day is whether the media are able to balance competitive pressures with the need to be sure about the facts before calling a race.
When reporters called Florida, first for Al Gore, then for George W. Bush, and then as "too close to call," were they just doing their jobs in a very close election? Or were they irresponsibly rushing to judgment and perhaps unfairly influencing the contest for the Presidency?
Marvin Kalb joined us today in an online chat to discuss the role of the media in American politics. Kalb, an award-winning journalist, moderator and author for more than 30 years, currently acts as executive director of the Washington office of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. Kalb also lectures at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. The chat transcript is below.
Moderator at 2:00pm ET
Welcome Marvin Kalb.
Tom Blazier at 2:00pm ET
How would you compare this year's election coverage with that of 1988? To what extent has the media learned from that "low-watermark" year of largely substance-less reporting and the subsequent hand-wringing by many within the news industry over the media's role in a Democratic society?
Marvin Kalb at 2:03pm ET
It is a complicated question. 1988 was a very difficult year for reporters. They were unhappy with the candidates, and they were unhappy with their own performance. They vowed never to do it again in the same way.
Each Presidential election since then has been covered in a somewhat different way. There are now more 24-hour-a-day television news networks, there is now the Internet, there is now much more speculation about personalities, and less substantive news.
Reporters are being questioned vigorously at this time about their coverage of the 2000 campaign. They're not particularly happy with what they did, but they think they did better than in previous campaigns.
James in Atlanta from delta.com at 2:03pm ET
What practical changes do you recommend to make election night coverage more like hard news rather than "info-tainment"?
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