A Long Night at the Races

The Super Bowl comes but once every four years for network news divisions, and Election Night is it. To call or not to call is the question--first the states, then the presidential winner --and timing with accuracy is everything. It was precisely at 3:30 a.m. when NBC, taking a deep breath and one last look into the oracular recesses of its key precincts, declared that Jimmy Carter would capture an electoral college majority and be next President of the U.S.

NBC's pronunciamento beat ABC to the verdict by seconds, CBS by 15 minutes.* "We're hypercautious," admitted Walter Cronkite. "We're always first," said a happy NBC News President Richard Wald as he munched tortilla chips at his Rockefeller Center election command post. To which William Sheehan, Wald's counterpart at ABC, replied: "I'd be satisfied to call it a tie."

Gusto Game. Whatever they called it, the networks spent the evening in furious competition, playing with gusto the game they had vowed not to engage in this outing. After ABC and NBC guessed wrong in pronouncing Morris Udall the victor of last April's Wisconsin primary (Carter came from behind during the lobster shift), officials of all three networks said they would stress accuracy over speed on Election Night. NBC, for example, forbade staff members to tell its vote analysts about any competitors' returns, for fear of hastening NBC projections. Somewhere along the way, however, caution failed to thwart competitiveness. When Sheehan learned that CBS had awarded Pennsylvania to Carter, he phoned an ABC analyst and said, "CBS just called Pennsylvania and it looks good." CBS's early boldness eventually backfired; the network had to retract a projection of a Carter win in Oregon. Said NBC Executive Producer Gordon Manning: "The name of the game is still to call the winners."

The price of the game was higher this year: an estimated $10 million, up from the $9 million total the three networks spent in 1972. Much of that extra money went into elaborate new sets and gadgetry. CBS headquarters was sheathed in enough slanted Plexiglas to suggest a futuristic Dairy Queen. ABC's election-center reporters sat at semicircular desks that resembled, and were described by their occupants as, bumper cars. NBC's 336-sq.-ft. map of the country looked like a visual aid for Hollywood Squares: each state took on a hue (red for Carter, blue for Ford) as its winner was projected. All three networks abandoned the traditional mechanical tote boards for computerized video display screens. They were not that much of an improvement; the NBC election team was issued magnifying glasses to help them read the returns.

The estimated 110 million viewers who tuned in at one time or another during the night (up about 10% from 1972) by and large got swift and careful reporting of the returns, sharp and useful guidance about which states and areas really mattered to the outcome. But they would have needed magnifying glasses to find much in the way of deeper insight or analysis. Walter Cronkite enlightened viewers with the fact that while only .0000002% of the population are astronauts, fully 2% of the U.S. Senate are now drawn from that calling. NBC's Jack Perkins interviewed Ezra Coram, age 100, of Riverside, Calif., who said that he has chosen mostly winners during his 76-year balloting career and this year voted for Ford. CBS's incisive Bill Moyers even lapsed once. Midway through a discussion of the 1876 election with Eric Sevareid, Moyers had to apologize for suggesting that the hoary-headed commentator had been around that year: "Of course, you won't recall it personally, Eric."

Green Curtain. Armchair psephologists might have expected more of the network anchors, who crammed for the event as if it were a bar exam. Walter Cronkite, who for four years had been squirreling away newspaper clippings and other relevant nuggets of information, went into semi-seclusion weeks ago. Every day he would pull a loden green curtain across the glass windows of his CBS Evening News office and retype his dog-eared files onto pages of a loose-leaf notebook. "I don't learn just by reading, so I rewrite everything and get it into my head," he reports. Similarly in the three weeks before E-day, NBC's John Chancellor covered four 12-in. by 17-in. cards with handwritten summaries of electoral and demographic facts. Chancellor's scribblings were all color-coded and organized into 51 tiny squares, one for each state and the District of Columbia. "It takes a long time," he says, "but it makes an anchor man feel comfortable to know the facts are right there."

Not that the evening was dull. After irate viewers had called NBC to complain, Chancellor apologized for noting, accurately as it happens, that Democrats are generally poorer and less well educated than Republicans: "If you're listening, Averell Harriman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan of Harvard, I hope you'll forgive me." CBS'S Dan Rather tried to brighten the proceedings with some well-honed metaphors. Assessing Gerald Ford's uncertain prospects in the Midwest, Rather declared: "You can pour water on the fire and call in the dogs, because the hunt will be over."

The star of the show was the electorate, a group so narrowly divided in its choice for President that network oracles had little time for cosmic generalizing. Recapping the fast-shifting vote totals left little air time for analysis. "Who was winning became the analysis," said NBC'S Wald. Voters may have yearned for more than a play-by-play, but on Election Night television when the contest is close, it matters less how a candidate won or lost than when.

* three networks trailed United Press International, which declared Carter the winner at exactly 2:57 a.m.

NEWSWATCH/THOMAS GRIFFITH

The Press as a Minefield

Whatever else can be said about this year's campaign, it is the first--let us pause a moment to celebrate--in which the bias of the press did not become an issue. That's a remarkable change from the suspiciousness and acrimony of the Nixon-Agnew days. Perhaps the low amount of partisanship in the country kept such accusations from being heard. But the press wasn't much committed to a candidate either: James M. Naughton of the New York Times quoted a fellow reporter as saying that in a poll of correspondents, "the undecided vote would be about 89%."

The more pertinent question is whether the press--in its cynicism, disdain and plague-on-both-your-houses impartiality--helped to trivialize the campaign and thus contributed to the public's turned-off mood. Looking back on many of the '"issues" that dominated the headlines--ethnic purity, the Playboy interview, Clarence Kelley's valances, the Eastern Europe gaffe, Ford's finances--it's hard to escape the feeling that the press coverage has a lot to answer for. In the pack mentality of campaign journalism, once some characteristic in a candidate is spotlighted--Carter's "fuzziness," Ford's fumbling--it is endlessly insisted on. In Playboy, Carter noted that local newsmen often asked him good questions on the issues, "but the traveling press have zero interest in any issue unless it's a mistake. What they're looking for is a 47-second argument between me and another candidate or something like that." Television coverage bears him out. Charles Mohr of the Times, one of the fairest of reporters, noted that Carter didn't seem to grasp fully "that if he wishes on a given day to draw national attention to a major statement on an important issue, he cannot also make a biting or catchy gibe at President Ford or react to a presidential remark with an angry comment." This may be sound practical advice, but what does it say about serious journalism?

The answer to the triviality of press coverage turns on whether real issues were raised by the candidates and ignored by the press. It is true that there was little daily coverage of the candidates' stands on issues, but they were not very vigorously asserted by the candidates themselves. Where were the major policy speeches comparable to those by Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, or even to the sheaves of "position papers" on every subject that Nixon put out in 1968? This was a campaign dominated by admen's televised simplicities, endlessly repeated.

Both candidates came to regard the press as a minefield, best skirted when possible. Until his final travel and television blitz, the President bunkered in the White House, allowing only "photo opportunities" showing him signing bills or meeting diplomats--with reporters' questions not allowed. At his first televised press conference in eight months, the President turned almost every question into a political slogan; reporters felt used and asked needling questions.

As for Carter, once the nomination was his, he too became less available to reporters, except on the run. They also found it hard to report on a candidate who preferred to stress traits (character, leadership) rather than tangible policies. Politicians who might have had something to say, like Ted Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and John Connally, spoke only enough so that they couldn't be accused of absenteeism.

The press found its usual role of disinterested reporter usurped on two sides. On one side was the widespread parodying of news techniques in political commercials. It was deplorable, for example, to see Sportscaster Joe Garagiola serving up fungoes to Jerry Ford in imitation of a reporter asking searching questions. The working press also found itself outranked by the favors granted to guest journalists. Hoping to reach the sizable but apathetic young audience, Carter talked lengthily to Rolling Stone's self-centered Hunter S. Thompson (who neglected to quote Jimmy), to Norman Mailer (Carter said a four-letter word) and to Playboy's Robert Scheer, a self-styled "aggressive Berkeley radical." The delayed effects of these interviews increased Carter's wariness with the press.

All in all, the regular press did some of its best work in reporting and analyzing the volatility of the public's mood. Perhaps it overemphasized--and contributed to --the public frustration because it felt that frustration. But the tenor of the campaign for better or worse--mostly for worse--was set by the candidates themselves.

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