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With ABC anchor Charles Gibson hosting his taped one-on-one interview with candidate John McCain and NBC anchor Brian Williams airing the second part of his one-one-one interview with Barack Obama, campaign coverage dominated the networks' news agenda. And quite appropriate news judgment it was too going into the final weekend before Election Day. It was unfortunate that the escalation of the civil war in the Congo should suffer such neglect as a result. Only ABC filed a report from the warzone--and that was handled by Orla Guerin (no link) of its British newsgathering partner BBC. Anyway CBS and NBC led their newscasts with McCain while ABC led with Obama. Of the two, Obama (11 min v 10) received fractionally more coverage and so technically qualified as Story of the Day.

ABC's Jake Tapper (no link) and CBS' Dean Reynolds and NBC's Lee Cowan all ended the day in Chicago for Halloween as candidate Obama took time off the campaign trail to admire his daughters' costumes. He started the day in Iowa, site of the caucus triumph in Iowa that was his first win of the primary season--and one of several states that George Bush won in 2004 that he hopes to turn from red to blue. Cowan was quite certain that Iowa would switch: "Today's return is a sentimental journey not one of necessity. Polls show him with a solid lead here."

Besides Iowa, CBS' Reynolds ticked off eight states that may be ripe for "flipping"--Ohio, NC, Fla, Va, Colo, Nev, Mo, Ind. All three correspondents gave publicity to the Obama campaign's announcement of three late TV ad buy additions to that list--Georgia, North Dakota and "shockingly" Arizona, as ABC's Tapper saw it, given that it is John McCain's home base.

In a mangle of mathematical confusion, NBC anchor Brian Williams listed just six of those states, on which he claimed the election is "hinging"--Ohio, NC, Fla, Nev, Mo, Ind--with "a combined 89 electoral votes that will get you a long way to 270." The reason why this was confusing was that Williams' map had already assigned Pennsylvania, Virginia and Colorado to Obama's likely column, thereby giving him 286 votes, enough to win without any of those undecided 89.

Williams should have left the map in political director Chuck Todd's safer hands. In Todd We Trust. All Others Must Bring Data as the saying goes.


Andrew Tyndall 11/3/08 11:41:25 pm

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