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ELECTION NIGHT REWIND: The Bias Doesn’t Stop When the Voting Is Over
Expect a huge audience Tuesday evening when the 2024 election results start pouring in. Four years ago, a combined 57 million people tuned in to the 21 broadcast and cable networks who offered coverage; in 2016, the collective audience was even greater: 71 million viewers, across 13 networks.
Yet even after all of the votes have been cast, and the collective voice of the people has chosen the country’s path for the next four years, journalists insist on getting the final word. Looking back at the MRC’s archives over the past 36 years, network correspondents present the results through the lens of their own biases — cheering when a Democrat wins, and snarling about imaginary dirty tricks when the voters back a Republican.
“[George H. W.] Bush won by default, and by fouls,” whined writer Gary Wills in 1988, after a presidential campaign that would seem downright dainty by today’s standards. “Did the new voting technology tamper with last week’s presidential election?” MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann conspiratorially — and wrongly — suggested after President George W. Bush won re-election in 2004.
Liberal journalists tried to claim victory for the Democrats 24 years ago. “If this race is counted fairly, Al Gore won more votes in Florida,” ABC’s George Stephanopoulos proclaimed on November 12, 2000.
The media celebrated both of Barack Obama’s elections. “When was the last time our nation cheered this much?” wondered CBS’s Byron Pitts on the November 5, 2008 CBS Evening News.
“Obama was re-elected. You must be orgasmic,” Tonight Show host Jay Leno suggested to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews in 2012.
“You know, I never thought of that word in this context, but it’s a good metaphor,” Matthews cheerfully replied.
Donald Trump’s election in 2016 anguished the media. “This is a moral 9/11,” fretted New York Times columnist Tom Friedman. “Only 9/11 was done to us from the outside, and we did this to ourselves.”
Four years later, the President’s defeat brought delight. “The joy is palpable out there,” beamed CBS’s Gayle King on November 7, 2020, after Pennsylvania’s votes put Joe Biden over the top. “For tens of millions of our fellow Americans, their long national nightmare is over,” echoed CNN’s Jake Tapper that same day.
As we prepare for hours of media punditry on Tuesday night (and beyond), here’s a look back at some of the most biased media reactions to presidential elections going back to 1988, all culled from the MRC’s archives:
■ “There are people in the country who think George Bush won not in a landslide, but a mudslide.”— ABC’s Peter Jennings during his network’s election night coverage, November 8, 1988.
■ “Bush won by default, and by fouls. His ‘mandate’ is to ignore the threats to our economy, sustain the Reagan heritage of let’s pretend, and serve as figurehead for what America has become, a frightened empire hiding its problems from itself.”— Conclusion of November 21, 1988 Time article by Gary Wills.
■ “There are many people in the Republican Party who believe that the Republican National Convention in Houston, at which you were a prominent part, was simply too extreme, too strident in its positions, and they cite your speech and Pat Buchanan’s speech as well.”— NBC anchor Tom Brokaw to Pat Robertson during election night coverage, November 3, 1992.
■ “I think that the convention — and certainly all the polling data indicates this — offended a lot of women, offended a lot of people in the country who thought it was too religious and too hard-edged.”— NBC’s John Chancellor during election night coverage, November 3, 1992.
■ “At a moment when the American libido seems to oscillate between Puritanism and rampant exhibitionism, how significant is it that for the first time in more than 30 years the nation has elected a President with sex appeal?”— Time Senior Writer Walter Shapiro writing about Bill Clinton’s election, November 16, 1992.
■ “There is no question, or very little question, that Al Gore won the votes cast in the state of Florida. The question is: Will he win the votes counted?...If this race is counted fairly, Al Gore won more votes in Florida.”— ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on This Week, November 12, 2000.
■ “If Bush is elected and it’s proved on a hand count that Gore actually carried Florida (not to mention the popular vote), what will the country say? ‘Ooops’ isn’t going to cut it....However agreeable and successful he turns out to be, the new President is doomed to be seen by many Americans as a bastard.”— Jonathan Alter writing in the December 11, 2000 Newsweek.
■ “When you tell me, ‘Let the states decide,’ that scares me, okay? I’ve got a little map here of [the] pre-Civil War [United States], free versus slave states. I wish you could see it in color and large. But if you look at it, the red states are all down in the South, and you have the Nebraska Territories, the New Mexico Territories, and the Kansas Territories. But the Pacific Northwest and California were not slave states. The Northeast was not. It looks like the [Electoral College] map of 2004.”— Former World News Tonight/Sunday anchor Carole Simpson, who now travels the country for ABC News to talk to high schoolers about how to consume news, at a National Press Club forum shown on C-SPAN, November 8, 2004.
■ “Did the new voting technology tamper with last week’s presidential election? Why did an Ohio county lock down its vote count, claiming it was for homeland security purposes? Why did 29 heavily Democratic Florida counties, with optical ballot scanners, wind up voting heavily Republican?...Did the new voting technology tamper with last week’s presidential election?...There is a small but blood curdling group of reports of voting irregularities and possible fraud....”— MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann opening his 8pm EST program, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, November 8, 2004.
■ “This nation woke up this morning changed. As one columnist put it, America matured in 2008 by choosing Barack Obama.”— Anchor Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News, November 5, 2008.
■ “When you work here in the crossroads of the world, you get used to group jubilation in various forms. But last night was transcendent. It was something else entirely....A melting pot of communal joy....Voices from around the world shouted of the greatness of America. And it really came in ebbs and flows. When the announcement was made, literal dancing in the streets and then, it calmed down. And people were locking in embraces.”— ABC’s Bill Weir on Good Morning America, November 5, 2008.
■ “When was the last time our nation cheered this much?... ‘We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union’ — that’s what the Constitution says. Last night, all across America, for so many people, that’s how it felt. A more perfect union.”— Correspondent Byron Pitts on the November 5, 2008 CBS Evening News.
■ “I think unless the GOP becomes ‘the GNP,’ which is the Grand New Party, they’re on the verge of extinction because they’re tone deaf.”— CNN’s Don Lemon on Starting Point, November 9, 2012.
■ Fill-in co-host Mario Cantone: “What do you think the Republican Party has to do to fix themselves....What do you think?”MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough: “Yeah. They’ve got to stop listening to the most extreme people in their party....It’s very simple. They’ve got to stop listening to the most extreme people in their party, whether it’s on talk radio or on cable news or on the internet.”— Exchange on ABC’s The View, November 9, 2012.
■ Host Jay Leno: “Well, Obama was re-elected. You must be orgasmic.” [laughing]MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: “You know, I never thought of that word in this context, but it’s a good metaphor.”— NBC’s Tonight Show, November 16, 2012.
■ “There were gasps around the world. Headlines, ‘Trumpocalypse’ and ‘Disunited States.’ And echoes of the Brexit vote too, against the European Union establishment. But there are deeper concerns tonight that the world’s shining light of democracy has gone dark.”— Correspondent Richard Engel on NBC Nightly News, November 9, 2016.
■ “It’s hard to be a parent, tonight, for a lot of us. You tell your kids, don’t be a bully. You tell your kids, don’t be a bigot....And then, you have this outcome....This was a ‘white-lash.’ This was a ‘white-lash’ against a changing country. It was a ‘white-lash’ against a black president.”— CNN’s political analyst Van Jones during live election night coverage 12:44 am ET, November 9, 2016.
■ “This is a moral 9/11. Only 9/11 was done to us from the outside and we did this to ourselves.”— New York Times columnist Tom Friedman on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, November 11, 2016.
■ “To paraphrase President Ford, for tens of millions of our fellow Americans, their long national nightmare is over.”— Host Jake Tapper on CNN election coverage, November 7, 2020.
■ “I called it unbridled exuberance. It’s like, Norah, the country is having a nationwide block party….You feel it. The joy is palpable out there….The weather was so beautiful….It’s almost like Mother Nature was cooperating on this day.”— CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King during live election coverage, November 7, 2020.
■ “Speaking to people today, V-J Day in Times Square. There’s that famous photograph of the kiss in Times Square. There are people who describe a kind of release and that comes….from something they have felt constricted by over the past few years.”— 60 Minutes correspondent John Dickerson on CBS News 2020: America Decided, November 7, 2020.
■ “This terrible, terrible man, he turned America into a country whose model was ‘Show me the money,’ and ‘Get the hell off my lawn.’ And I am so happy he has been defeated. We have so much work to do, but we have been saved.”— New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman on ABC News live election coverage, November 7, 2020.
For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.
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