America on High Alert: US Media Companies Ramp Up Election Coverage as Voter Distrust Reaches Fever Pitch

Pressure to ‘reliably report’ amid election fraud claims and fake news spread

US media companies increase their coverage of the presidential election amid tight race and voter distrust
Pressure to ‘reliably report’ amid election fraud claims and fake news spread 미국 대선 TV토론 시청하는 남자 A man watches the presidential debate between Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris at a 97-year-old movie theater Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, in Shawnee, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

(Washington = Yonhap News) Correspondent Kim Dong-hyun = As the US presidential election is becoming an extremely close race with no clear winner, the New York Times (NYT) reported on the 25th (local time) that American media outlets are increasing their staff to cover and analyze the vote counting results.

With the election likely to take days to decide who wins and the prospect of a massive amount of fake news, media outlets are feeling enormous pressure to provide viewers with reports they can trust, according to reports.

There is an atmosphere of skepticism about the electoral system and media reporting, especially among conservatives, so media companies are putting more effort than in the past into explaining the content and methods of their reporting to readers.

AP, the leading news agency in the United States, decided it needed to allocate more manpower and resources to explain its election results to its readers, so it hired additional reporters.

The AP independently tallies and analyzes the vote counting results for each election and declares a winner. It is highly accurate and authoritative, so many American media outlets cite it in their reporting.

“There’s a mistrust of elections, and of the system in general,” said Julie Pace, AP’s managing editor. “We figured that because we’ve been doing this for so long, the public would know that and if we declared a winner, people would believe us, but now we know that we have to go beyond that.”

NBC News plans to deploy new reporters, known as “county captains,” to counties that could have a major impact on the election outcome to monitor the vote counting process.

CNN has beefed up its legal team in case there is a dispute over the results in battleground states.

CBS News created a new fact-checking team of about 20 reporters last year to prepare for the massive amount of misinformation that could circulate on Election Day.

The team’s role is to determine the facts when claims are made that the counting machines are broken on election day or that there are problems at polling places.

사전투표하는 미국 유권자 epa11622423 Early voters fills in their ballots in the 2024 US presidential election at the Long Bridge Aquatics and Fitness Center in Arlington, Virginia, USA, 24 September 2024. Early in-person voting sites opened throughout Virginia on 20 September 2024. EPA/JIM LO SCALZO
The Times also plans to deploy additional reporters to cover the results in key counties and constituencies.

Reporters will tally how many votes remain uncounted, including absentee and mail-in ballots.

In the 2020 presidential election, in which President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump, there were instances where absentee and mail-in ballots, which are counted later than in-person ballots at polling places, were counted later, causing broadcasters’ vote counts to suddenly change dramatically.

Because Democrats used mail-in voting more than Republicans, states that former President Trump had won went to President Joe Biden when the mail-in votes were reflected, and the Trump campaign claimed that the media was manipulating votes for the Democrats.

The New York Times assessed that one of the main reasons the American public became suspicious of the media’s coverage of the election was former President Trump’s claims of election fraud.

To this day, former President Trump continues to claim without any solid evidence that the 2020 election results were fraudulent, and many of his supporters agree with him.

“High-profile figures in American politics have been raising questions about the election results without evidence of widespread fraud,” said AP’s Pace editor. “So the public is understandably confused. We take responsibility for this situation.”

However, even conservative media friendly to former President Trump could not avoid controversy over their election coverage.

Fox News was the first media outlet to predict that former President Trump would lose the battleground state of Arizona during its 2020 election coverage.

Former President Trump was furious at the report, and his aides called on Fox News to retract its prediction of the Arizona result.

Fox News did not retract its report, and it was accurate in reporting that former President Trump would lose in Arizona.

For this election, Fox News has developed a new model to better predict mail-in voting results.

bluekey@yna.co.kr
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