A look behind the scenes: News outlets are aware of the need to explain election coverage

NEW YORK (AP) — The Associated Press will have thousands of people on site this week to count votes and determine winners and losers in the U.S. election. This continues a tradition that began in 1848.

This year there is an even bigger priority explain this process to outsiders.

The AP has already published a series of reports outlining how it all works and has a team of reporters assigned on election night to write in plain language why they choose key individual states as presidential candidates Kamala Harris or Donald Trump “calls out”.

There are similar plans at other news organizations. At the AP, editors are aware of political misinformation and opinion polls that reveal a growing distrust of the media, he said Julie PaceSenior Vice President and Editor-in-Chief.

“I can’t get people to trust us,” Pace said. “But we have spent an incredible amount of time, effort and resources to achieve exactly that. We take it very seriously.”

Several news organizations are trying to explain things

NBC News has published explanatory stories on its website — one, for example, tells readers how exit polls work and how the network will use them. The New York Times has promised more information about one of its most popular online posts on election night. the needlewhich fluctuates because it measures the probability of which presidential candidate will win.

On the air, ABC News did a segment “Protect your voice” The series profiled poll workers, explained why there will be fewer polling places and profiled people caught up in election lawsuits.

CNN is also publishing a series of articles that explain the projection process, election polls, and provide advice on how people should follow election night coverage. That's it too create a version His “Magic Wall” is available online, giving viewers the same access to statistics and historical comparisons that correspondent John King has on-air.

The role of the AP on election night Counting of votes is unique and is based on the premise that while individual jurisdictions report numbers, there is no federal agency that aggregates everything.

The process involves nearly 5,000 people and the data is widely used across the news industry. Stringers collect results directly from local governments across the country and transmit them to a voting center, where the numbers are compiled and cross-referenced with online sources. Regardless, the news organization – like the major television networks – names individual breeds using actual results, final surveys and historical trends.

The rule for determining a winner is simple: “We call the race if there is no way the trailing candidate can catch up,” Pace said. In 2020, news outlets declared Joe Biden the winner over Trump on the Saturday after Election Day.

The AP expects there will be 6,832 individual elections this year, ranging from presidential to local elections and ballot measures.

Why calls are made – and not

A dozen journalists were assigned to write stories and live blog posts explaining the specific factors at play in decisions in the president's key swing states and other closely watched races. It's a test for writers: it requires both technical knowledge and the ability to convey that information clearly and quickly.

It's also important to keep people informed if a race becomes too close or other factors prevent a decision.

“It's absolutely important for an organization to be as transparent as possible, especially because there are attempts to question the credibility of calls,” said Mark Lukasiewicz, dean of Hofstra University's communications school and a longtime NBC News producer. At the same time, it's difficult to do this in a way that makes sense to people who aren't statisticians or systems operations experts, he said.

The AP was correct on each of its presidential, congressional and gubernatorial calls in the 2020 race, with an overall accuracy rate of 99.9%.

But then-President Trump and his supporters were furious when Fox News Channel and the AP reported Joe Biden as the winner in the key state of Arizona long before other news organizations. The call proved correct, but it fueled distrust in the voting process. Fox in particular faced one huge setback from his viewers.

“There is a direct connection from this episode to AP's efforts to be more systematic and thorough in its intelligence efforts this year,” Pace said.

“We need to be able to explain better and faster what's happening in these moments, rather than effectively saying, 'We're the AP, we have a 99% accuracy rate, of course we're right,'” she said.

Only about a quarter of Republicans say they have either “a lot” or “quite a lot” of confidence that votes will be counted correctly statewide a survey published on Friday from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. About three-quarters of Democrats said they had the same level of trust.

Don't overlook the everyday things that could become stories

Journalists also need to be aware that even small things that routinely happen in elections — numbers that are mistakenly mixed up on a vote count or broken voting machines that lead to extended hours at some polling stations — are stories that need to be covered must be done so that they are not treated properly. I will not fall into conspiracy theories.

Ultimately, the United States elections went incredibly well, Pace said.

“I hope that we've been very transparent when people don't know what's going to happen here, what's happening behind the scenes,” she said. “It's all there. Everything is available to people.

“I am not naive enough to believe that releasing this information will dispel all election skepticism or curb all misinformation, but it is an incredibly powerful effort to ensure that fact-based, explanatory information about elections is available. ”

The AP experimented with more of this material early in the election season and proved popular with readers. “It reinforced our belief that this is what we should do,” she said.

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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.