Election night '24: Kamala Harris-Donald Trump contest poses tough coverage issues for networks

Television has a 76-year legacy of presidential election night coverage dating back to 1948 when Harry S. Truman beat Thomas E. Dewey. But on Nov. 5,  as Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump face off — that legacy will face its toughest test.

The challenges before the majors — ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC — are even more pitched than those they faced in 2020, with disinformation topping the list, and how that will be refracted through powerful, intractable forces far beyond their control.

Artificial intelligence will become a first-time factor on election night, too. How that will stoke the ever-present conspiracy mill is now anyone's guess.

Then there are those foundational changes that continue to sweep over the entire so-called "legacy" media landscape, as fewer and fewer people tune into election night TV coverage, while more turn to social media — or simply tune out altogether.

At this moment, with just days to go, the question before them is stark and simple. Will Nov. 5 reaffirm why they're the nation's most essential information source on election night, or will it be just more drift toward irrelevance?

Here are some of those key challenges, and how the networks plan to deal with them.

COMBATTING DISINFORMATION

Disinformation — the malicious spread of falsehoods tied to the news, for fun, profit or myriad other motives — has been around for as long as there has been news, including a handful of flagrant instances in recent weeks. Experts now say it's the top concern of legitimate news outlets on Nov. 5, largely because of the arrival of AI, and what they call "foreign actors" who are also expected to prime the disinformation pump on Election Day.

Carrie Budoff Brown, NBC's senior vice president of politics, says "the level of disinformation is a concern, obviously, because the hurricanes [Helen and Milton] this past month" —- variations of widely disseminated and debunked stories that FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was hindering Helene relief efforts in North Carolina.

Those "were really to me a cautionary tale in terms of what we're going to see and potentially could see in that period where voters are voting. Information travels quickly [and] we've obvioiusly done everythng we can to make sure we are where we need to be. We want to close as many gaps as we can."

Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist with University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and an expert in disinformation's impact on elections, says "Each election becomes more fraught because more and more disinformation enters the public discourse and that makes it harder and harder to sort out what is true in that high pressure get-it-first environment of breaking news."

He adds, "Our social media environment in many ways treats disinformation with the same attention — and sometimes even greater attention — than that which is accurate."

One reason for this is "confirmation bias," or the habit of consuming news or information that reaffirms one's own beliefs. Social media algorithms — from TikTok, to Parler, to X to Facebook — are engineered to boost whatever flavor of information their users want, real or otherwise.

How this plays out on election night is easy or scary enough to imagine. Someone posts an AI-generated video, which is shared and reposted, then like a virus it enters the information pipeline of millions of people. The major networks hope to be in a position to check it out then swat it away on election night. But that story — however fake or outrageous — will still become part of their election night coverage, while diverting resources.

But that's not even the biggest dilemma for the networks, experts say. More people, particularly younger ones, or so-called "zoomers," are expected to get more of their election news on social media than on TV. Will they ever even see those TV network stories debunking the fake stuff?

Joe Peyronnin, a New York University professor who worked the election desk during a long career at CBS dating back to 1978, says disinformation could potentially become a "weapon that's going to be used by campaigns to mobilize votes [and] the networks have to have large teams in place ready to double-check the facts." But if an individual debunks a false story, "not everyone will get the message because instead of 30 million viewers, you've got five."

"Virtually all the mainstream media outlets, and the major networks for sure, have developed and resourced units that specialize in spotting" disinformation, says Mark Lukasiewicz, dean of Hofstra University's Lawrence Herbert School of Communication and a veteran of NBC News and ABC News. "They're certainly applying the resources to combat that and to prevent their own channels from disseminating false information and I give them credit for that. "

However, "the fact set for one group of people is completely different from the fact set of another group," Lukasiewicz says, because of fast-growing social media platforms like TikTok — with 170 million users in the United States alone.

He calls this "a problem mainstream media has less and less sway in moderating because the consumption of mainstream journalism continues to decline, while all sorts of alternatives, particularly partisan ones, continue to rise up."

Farnsworth, the political scientist, says: "I'm very worried about this election with respect to disinformation because we still have a significant number of people who think the election was stolen in 2020 and are primed to believe it will be in 2024 as well. We also know there are many social media voices lying in wait who are working for international actors that do not wish America well, and will try to maximize discord and division on Election Day.

"If you want an upbeat conversation, you're talking to the wrong guy."

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'BOOTS ON THE GROUND' STRATEGY

TV executives say they've figured out some solutions to battling disinformation on election night, or at least some ways to even the playing field. The networks, for example, recently launched dedicated TikTok feeds, and have a big presence on a half-dozen other social media platforms. That means viewers don't even have to watch a TV to "tune in" like in the old days.

In addition, the streaming news services of ABC, NBC and CBS were scarcely a factor on Nov. 3, 2020, but that has changed because of the explosion of streaming media itself. These have grown over the past years because the streaming services that carry them (like Peacock and Paramount +) were launched, while others (Hulu, YouTube) grew rapidly at cable's expense. As a result, these newish services could be a real factor on Nov. 5.

Meanwhile, the networks have made changes to the news-gathering process for election night, with the launch of fact-checking desks, and the deployment of teams of "embeds" — reporters on the ground — who will be stationed at various polling sites in the seven key swing states.

"This election night isn't happening on TV in a vacuum," says ABC vice president/Washington D.C. bureau chief Rick Klein. "We're going to be very much attuned to what's going on online, and what's spreading. The first line of reporting is to take a piece of information and report it out, and try to figure out whether it's true. We'll have a team of visual verification experts standing by and also a big 'Ballot Watch' team with reporters assigned to battleground states to see what's happening in real time."

NBC News has also reinforced its ongoing "Vote Watch" initiative, with plans in place for two layers of embeds, including some 30 journalists, or so-called "County Captains," stationed at swing state polling sites to report on developments, or debunk falsehoods that may have made their way onto social media. NBC also has a project called "Deciders," featuring reporters who live in swing state communities where they've developed contacts and local insight. NBC says they'll all work closely with the network's decision desk (which calls races) and the panel of on-air experts at MSNBC and NBC.

"It's about having boots on the ground where the story is happening," says NBC's Budoff Brown. "We want to be as accurate as possible, by putting individual journalists into these counties where they've already lived, and where they'll be camping out again while the votes are being counted. Journalists need to be where the action is, and if something happens or there's an anomaly, we won't be scrambling or relying on social media or secondhand information because we'll already be there."

Each of the networks are also espousing what they're calling transparency, or an eagerness to let viewers in on the process of how, when or even if races are called.

Prime Video and NewsNation will both inaugurate election night broadcasts — Prime's will be anchored by former "Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams, and NewsNation's by Elizabeth Vargas and Chris Cuomo — that will let viewers behind the scenes. Neither will have a so-called "decision desk" — numbers crunchers who sort through the exit poll data and raw voter counts to determine winners and losers — but instead will rely on outsourced information sources. Chris Stirewalt, the former Fox News analyst, now NewsNation's political editor, says this approach strips away an unneeded layer of complexity, and allows him to be "as transparent as possible" with viewers about how races are called.

Jonathan Wald, a former NBC News producer in charge of Williams' Prime broadcast, says his approach will be to "democratize our presentation" and let viewers know "we're not making pronouncements from Mount Olympus but speaking as openly and honestly about the process as we can."

HANDICAPPING THE HORSE RACE

Over most of the decades that followed that first televised election night in 1948, TV's approach was roughly the same every four years — the "voice of God" anchor analysis of the so-called "horse race" (who's winning, who's losing) and a rush to become the first network to call a winner before viewers went to bed.

That all changed after 2000 when TV botched Florida by calling the election for Al Gore. Caution then ruled, particularly with those big, momentous swing state races. Some TV networks resisted calling them at all on Nov. 3, 2020, because of razor-thin margins in most of those states.

But at 11:20 ET that night, Fox News became the first network to call Arizona for Joe Biden, which essentially meant he had enough electoral votes to win the general election once the Pennsylvania votes were counted. (ABC, for example, didn't Pennsylvania until that Saturday.) 

Fox turned out to be right, but this also ignited an election night firestorm, with lasting repercussions. It infuriated millions of Fox viewers, one in particular — Trump — who accused the network of using "rigged" figures (they were not). The events leading up to Jan. 6 were then set in motion.

As a result, every network knows — if it didn't already — how big the stakes are in calling the winner in a swing state too early, or even calling a winner at all that night.

Fox later fired Stirewalt, the network's veteran on-air analyst and political editor. He went on to write a book ("Broken News") about the decline of TV news, and its failings on election night. (Of the Arizona call, he wrote that all he had done was "serve up green beans to [Fox News] viewers who had been spoon-fed ice cream sundaes for years [which] came as a terrible shock to their system.")

Nevertheless, the call set in motion a debate that continues — why focus on the horse race when all that does is confuse viewers, particularly in a supertight national race, especially when a network might have to reverse the call when all the votes are finally counted?

Elaine Kamarck, senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution, argues in a recent book,  "Lies That Kill: A Citizen's Guide to Disinformation" (coauthored with Darrell M. West), that calling races on election night has now become part of the disinformation wave because it confuses viewers and breeds conspiracy theories.

In a phone interview, Kamarck says, "It's the partial information that makes everyone think something fishy is going on, because it's entirely possible you can go to bed with Trump winning in a state and waking up in the morning with Harris winning."

"At least [the networks] no longer have the compulsion they did in 2000 to call the election when the data did not support that or was incomplete," says Larry Sabato, a professor at University of Virginia and director of UVA's Center for Politics. "They don't call until they are reasonably sure and maybe even more than reasonably sure that a state has gone for a particular candidate. We don't criticize the networks now for being second or third to call a race, but for being wrong."

GRAPPLING WITH THE 'BLUE SHIFT'

Over the past few elections, and 2020 in particular, the networks have grappled with something called the "blue shift." This is when a state appears to be red, or Republican, soon after the polls close, but then turns blue, or Democrat, after the mail-in and early vote ballots are counted.

The shift was unusually pronounced in 2020 because of the huge wave of pandemic-induced mail-in ballots and early voting. A total of 70% of ballots were cast this way in 2020, and some estimates are that 60% of ballots will be mail-in or early for this election.

Most of those have been Democrat while the majority of those voting in-person on Election Day have been Republican. That's expected to remain the same this time around. The so-called "machine votes" (Republican) are counted first in critical states like Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), which made it appear red on Nov. 3, 2020, then the mail-ins are tallied, which turned it blue by the following morning.

The networks understand the phenomenon well, and tried to explain it to viewers in 2020. But millions of viewers were still confused — experts and TV executives have conceded — and in the confusion, conspiracy theories flourished.

The blue shift — assuming it happens again Nov. 5 in a few critical swing states — is now a subject of debate in TV and academic circles. Why not just wait until the following morning, or later, until all the votes are counted before calling the race?

Brookings' Kamarck says: "We should simply cover what the candidates are saying in their last days on the trail, then have reporters at polls to cover turnout and to see if there are any disruptions. Otherwise, [anchors] should simply say, 'We won't have the results until 9 the next morning, so go to bed.' "

On election night, 2020, she says TV anchors did attempt to explain the "blue shift" and "qualified their reporting but that doesn't make any difference because people don't listen to those qualifications. They wake up eight hours later and see that [Trump] lost, so they are convinced some shenanigans are going on."

The networks insist they have listened to the argument — but stop short of saying they will refuse to make an important call on election night, particularly one that looks like a blowout. Of course, the problem is that the swing state polls have indicated they are each in a virtual dead heat. Blowouts are unlikely.

What, then, is the TV network to do?

In an obvious sense, the debate over the blue shift is like the one over "horse race" coverage — itself part of the entire "disinformation" debate. To wit, if the networks make calls too early, or make bad ones, then aren't they, too, spreading disinformation, or at least misinformation?

Some TV execs counter that calling races is what they do, and what election nights are for.

Stirewalt, who was at the center of this particular storm four years ago, says the blue shift is nothing new, and that most viewers understand what's going on. And "the idea that there would be some sort of mutual disarmament in which all the news organizations agree to not forecast election results?" he says. "You and I know that's not going to happen and [calls] most assuredly will happen because people definitely want to know. It's going to be done by every major new organization [on Nov. 5] — TV, newspapers and The Associated Press."

In fact, some of the networks waited days to make crucial calls in 2020. Marc Burstein, ABC's senior executive producer in charge of special events coverage, says "transparency will be the word of the night [on Nov. 5], and we'll tell viewers when we know something, or when we don't or 'here's what we know.' Our decision desk will tell us what they know."

The networks do have a secret weapon — polls and exit polls in particular — to help guide their coverage except that weapon is broken. In a 2021 analysis, the American Association for Public Opinion Research found that 2020's polls were as wrong as they'd been in 40 years, and had overstated support for Biden by as much as four points in some states.

Exit polls — which canvas people who just voted and are conducted by Somerville, New Jersey-based Edison Research — are considered more reliable, but Edison's cofounder, Joe Lenski, says that even these numbers can't conclusively determine winners in tight races.

"I can't speak for [the networks] because they have their own independent editorial units that make their own projections," says Lenski, "but if you get them to talk about their concerns, it's not just about how they're going to report election night and afterward, but whether what they report is going to be understood — or believed."