Election Coverage Critique of CNN on 11/4/08

For the 2008 presidential election on November 4, 2008 I turned to CNN to watch their coverage of this historic election. At first I thought CNN would be the obvious choice to go to because where else would be the most comprehensive coverage? However, I found their set-up to be different and not as good as it could have been.
What I really liked was how the CNN studios had the technology to go back to the last election and compare what states are doing in 2004 as compared in 2008, because it was obvious to see the changes whenever they compared it. They could also zoom in so much that they could see how counties varied in voting red or blue. This is particularly interesting in the mid-west where there are numerous small counties throughout the states whereas looking at states with bigger counties such as New Hampshire does not show the same impact that these little counties can have as a collective whole.

I also liked how they had this thing called “voter analysis” which showed what types of people were voting for what side. Although I liked it was kind of odd how they could divide people up like this, I understand how they could by age but “church-going” or “race” did not really make sense to me. They also did not explain it well enough but I deduced that it was from voter registration and who was checking in. However, ballots are supposed to be anonymous so how did they really find this information? They were also able to conclude that this election was not necessarily about race as originally thought but age is what the major factor.
I noticed that CNN seemed to be a lot more conservative with their projections by prefacing them by saying things like “it’s still really early” and “we’re being conservative here” because of the past two elections that were called way too early. Not only were they called too early but were completely off base by calling the democratic candidates when it was really the republican candidate that had won. They also told us numerous times what exactly comprises their project: exit polls, analysis and actualities (the numbers).

Overall, I did not like the set up of the CNN coverage. They had too many people and too many of them spent their time on screen arguing. They had two hosts (Wolf Blitzer and Cooper Anderson), which I thought was good but then they had a group of five analysts (three white men, one African-American man and one white woman) who really did not seem to respect each other’s opinions. They would say something and then all of them would jump all over each other. After talking to them they would go to another table where there were four more analysts (three white men, one African-American woman) they would also do analysis and they seemed to respect each other more so than the first table of analysts. This also leads to less confusion because I could actually follow the discussion whereas the other analysts argued so much that I could not follow their analysis. There were also a man and a women doing the “voter analysis” as well as for the “state by state analysis” there was a man and a women. However, I did think that there was an even dispersion between republican and democrat analysts.
As for the website, it covered a lot of the same information the television station did however, without the analysis which could potentially be better just because some of them were so hard to follow. The website had links to CNN TV as well as CNN Radio meaning you could see election coverage from nearly every venue of media if you were not already watching it on television. You could also check into Obama and McCain headquarters to see what is going on there. They also allow you to make your own projections early on in the election so one can physically see how the electoral collage actually works. It also allowed you to go back to at least four elections and see how the elections worked out.

Later on in the broadcast near 10-10:30 they begin talking about how McCain would have to take the rest of the states to win the 270 electoral votes. However, the man who was running the state analysis seemed to have only pessimistic thoughts for McCain and he “bet on [his] life that the west coast will go to Obama” and that “[he was not] trying to be mean but it’s bleak”.

At 10:56 they began discussing as if the election was already over, which really was not the case although four minutes later it technically was. I really was not expecting the election to be decided by 11:00 PM because of what happened in the past two elections. However, they projected Obama because there was no way McCain would catch up in the electoral votes, which makes sense. After they announced that projection they showed various shots of the United States celebrating as well as around the world in places such as Kenya. Then they had the analysts go through their thoughts on this historic event. I really enjoyed seeing different perspectives especially those that were of minority and who were on the other side. I was surprised that shortly after many of the analysts left as CNN began to be more focused on the celebrations and even interviewed Martin Luther King Jr’s youngest daughter, which I thought was a nice touch.

As a whole CNN and CNN.com did a good job covering this election. However, they should have taken a few measures to have it be great coverage. First off if they had less analysts there would be less arguing and less confusion, all of which I think would be better. If they promised to be extra conservative they should not have been projecting at the rate they were projecting. Minutes after states polls would close CNN would immediately pull up a projection on the screen, without any ballot numbers coming in! They also seemed to have a slight tilt towards Obama simply because of the numbers piling up quickly in his favor, they were quick to project that he would become president, which I personally did not mind but I had not expected to find out the results until the next morning. All of these things are something to consider for CNN, for the election in 2012!