Election Night: A Groundbreaking Night in American Politics

The night of the US presidential election is often one in which many newsworthy events happen in rapid succession, no less in this election when Senator Barack Obama became the first black president. With events happening as quickly as they do, the news outlets often struggle to keep up while doing their job of covering the elections in a professional and comprehensive manner.

The Washington Post
The Washington post continues to provide effective and in-depth coverage right
-This article effectively humanizes Obama, and gives a sense of how the candidates at the center of the issue feel as their career for the next four years is decided.
-This story deals with the turnout issue, by dealing with who is voting and why. It is also important because it debunks the lies that are used to scare people away from the polls by publicizing their being used, which will ideally help bring more people to the polls by making them understand that they can vote without any repercussions.

Unfortunately, the interactive map was somewhat slow on the site, making it difficult to track the votes in real time.

The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post provides some good election night journalism, but it has some troubling ethical and professional flaws, showing the writers are either careless or disregard the rules.

-The section on voting problems had some good stories, which had important information for voters .
*This story had troubling implications, as it raised the potential for voters to be misled, and it was good that the Huffington Post publicized this issue.
*This story effectively publicizes an issue that potentially misled voters into missing their opportunity to vote, and helps highlight how important the closing times can be to voting.
*This story helped highlight another issue of voters being unfairly disqualified, one that is especially relevant in the current economic crisis
-This clip from Fox News, however, served little purpose except curiosity value, and a chance for liberals to celebrate the coincidence of one of McCain's chances for victory slipping away the first time its importance is mentioned.
-This article seems to be trying to make the implication that the Ohio Republican Party, and not just a few of its officials, are responsible for trying to disqualify student ballots, particularly in "But if the Iowa Republican Party is not eager to be associated with the challenging the ballots of young voters, they have yet to communicate their displeasure to those who are responsible for the tactic." The evidence provided does not justify making such a bold claim.

-One egregious ethical mistake they made was referring to Obama as "President-Elect" Obama at 10:15 PM, when Obama still only had 202 out of the 270 required electoral votes to become President. While this does not approach Fox's prematurely declaring Bush victorious in 2000 in egregiousness, it speaks to the Huffington Post's liberal bias and inadequately based confidence in Obama's victory. Journalists should not presume to know what will happen next and claim that presumption as fact, especially not in the course of a night that decides America's future, and the Huffington Post's lack of caution is unbecoming of them.

The information section updated quickly and provided good information on the current status of the race.

Fox News

Fox News had ethical flaws in its election night news.
-Realignment, a section talking about the liberals taking control of government, had a heavily anti-liberal viewpoint, characterizing the liberals as unwilling to compromise and wanting to ram their liberal agenda through Congress. The participants debated whether Obama was "far-left," and all did so under the unspoken assumption that it was bad to be "far-left." They are also currently placing Obama under considerably greater scrutiny than they did on Bush, suggesting that Obama is a "stealth candidate" who enters the presidency without people knowing who he is, showing that they have two different standards for candidates on the right and the left of the American political spectrum. They also misrepresent what America being a center-right nation means;
-Obama Elected President, however, features a guest suggesting that Obama being elected the first black president is noteworthy regardless of what the viewer thinks about it. While he is possibly saying it recognizing that many of the Fox viewers do not approve of Obama's being elected, he presented a good point, and did well to mention Obama's appeal among young people, even though he did not have much time to do so.
-The Palin Factor section clearly favors Palin, rejecting almost out of hand what they described as the "conventional wisdom" in the media that Palin was a liability for McCain. While it had some good points, such as Palin being picked to appeal to women, the people seemed unwilling to consider whether Palin would alienate voters, as they suggested that the people who did not support Palin would not have voted for McCain anyway, a slightly defeatist attitude that frees them from examining the facts. They also take jabs at the "liberal media," arguing that Palin received far more scrutiny than Biden or Obama did. This not only fails to take into account the attention given to Obama's past, but also suggests that all candidates must be investigated equally, regardless of whether any aspect of them demands investigation like Palin's conduct as governor does.

The interactive map showed the percentage fields for each state, but did not show which candidate had been declared the winner, and did not work as well as it could have.

Conclusion

Journalists are often put into situations in which their personal beliefs are in the news, and while they may have their biases, when they do stories on the news, they must cover it fairly. The Huffington Post and Fox News, albeit more the latter than the former, failed to do this, allowing their bias to color the news and potentially give the viewers misconceptions. The Washington Post was also the best at giving in-depth and useful information, and the Huffington Post provided some good information about voing, but Fox News provided little except partisan opinion and spin. Journalists must not only deliver the news first, but also do so accurately and fairly, and of the three news outlets I reviewed, the Washington Post performed the best in these regards.