‘Nightline’ E-Mail Goof Renews Cries of Media Bias

ABC News has tried hard to use the Internet to connect with viewers--and it seems finally to have achieved that, as a partisan brawl broke out Wednesday night via the daily e-mail from “Nightline” about its broadcast coverage plans on the Supreme Court decision that ended the presidential hopes of Vice President Al Gore and ensured victory for Gov. George W. Bush.

It began when Leroy Sievers, executive producer of “Nightline,” sent out a seemingly benign program update that said, in part, “From all appearances, this election campaign is over. By the time we go on the air tonight, there should be a president-elect. We’ll be documenting all of the day’s events on ‘Nightline’ tonight.”

That drew an immediate reply from one Los Angeles viewer, who signed himself “Disenfranchised, mocked, spurned American voter” and wrote, in part: “We don’t have a President elect; We have a President-Appoint: appointed by the five most partisan, most ideological members of the Supreme Court.” Due to an e-mail coding error--a result of the fact that the e-mail list has been increasing by 1,800 people a week and outgrew its technology--the reply went out to the entire “Nightline” list.

Soon a dozen e-mails from viewers of both political persuasions were flying back and forth before ABC shut it down, partly to make sure that no one would be able to gain access to the e-mail addresses of everyone on the list. Sievers on Thursday apologized for those on the list who were inconvenienced by the e-mails, but said he was fascinated by “how quickly it turned into a dialogue. It started out as an exchange between ‘Nightline’ and the public, but people started talking to each other really quickly.”

“Nightline” isn’t the only TV news operation hearing feedback. The post-election sparring has had passions running high. In what may turn out to be one legacy of the protracted political battle for the presidency, the public has been taking it out not just through call-in shows and Internet chat rooms, but by going directly to the television news outlets covering the imbroglio that ended Wednesday night with a concession speech from Gore, closely followed by an acceptance speech from President-elect Bush.

During a recent broadcast, CNN anchor Jeff Greenfield finally asked viewers to tone it down. “If we note, for example, that Al Gore leads in the national popular vote, that is a matter of fact. It doesn’t mean George W. Bush should lose the White House if he winds up with a majority of the electoral vote. If we note that some Democrats may be moving away from Al Gore, we’re not celebrating it, we’re reporting it. So keep those calls and letters and e-mails coming in, folks, whether you come to praise or bury us. But just for the sake of simple decency, you might want to leave out one or two of the more colorful adjectives.”

Greenfield traces the current mood among viewers to the election night foul-ups, when all the networks declared the Texas governor the winner in the presidential race before issuing a quick and dramatic reversal--saying the Florida electoral votes were too close to call. That fueled emotions, Greenfield says, creating “a big psychological factor that the networks called it for Bush.” For some viewers, Greenfield continued, “it’s as though some force took it away from [him].”

Complaints that there is political bias in TV news coverage aren’t new--indeed, some may even be valid. But they’ve reached new heights in the past year as three all-news cable networks battle it out for viewers. Fox News Channel, with former Republican image-maker Roger Ailes at its helm, has been accused by critics of a conservative slant ever since it went on the air. Fox, meanwhile, has levied charges that CNN skews toward President Clinton, because former CNN USA President Rick Kaplan is a friend of the president, and that NBC and ABC employ political reporters who used to work for Democratic administrations. Fox anchor Brit Hume routinely makes the editorial decisions of his rivals a topic for his own newscast.

In postelection reporting, Hume has taken on rival networks and the New York Times. One night, he devoted a segment to pointing out that NBC hadn’t interrupted “Titanic” to carry Bush’s comments following certification of Florida’s electoral votes, but had carried two statements on the issue--which were redundant, Hume said--by Gore. Hume talked about ABC anchor Peter Jennings, noting he “is denying that he had a disapproving look on his face while reporting Gov. Bush’s certification. He told viewers via his daily e-mail that he was merely reflecting the seriousness of the moment.”

Just like the arguing analysts dominating much of the news-channel coverage, viewers on both sides of the political spectrum have picked up the theme since election day and run with it. Among the protesters outside the U.S. Supreme Court one day were some chanting “Watch Fox News.”

In Atlanta, the volume of viewer calls to CNN’s headquarters, which totaled about 300 a day before the election, has nearly doubled. Some have seen bias where it simply doesn’t exist, calling, for example, if they see coverage of a rally of one candidate’s supporters, even though the network might have covered the rival protest earlier in the day. For those kinds of coverage decisions, Greenfield says, executives “put a stopwatch on it,” in an effort to be balanced to the minute.

Sievers sees viewers’ complaints of media bias as “one more bit of evidence of just how polarized this country has become. The depth of the anger over the reporting of things that may not be positive about one side or the other is very troubling. Speaking for the messengers, we’re a little tired of being shot at,” he wrote in a recent e-mail.

Sievers has been hearing from about 300 viewers a day around election time, and many more write in to a “Nightline” Web site chat room. Complaints have come from both sides, but recently, the show found itself the recipient of a bizarre spate of phone calls even before the broadcast of a report--and all because Sievers had tried to solicit comments about how to restore confidence in the media. A couple of hundred people responded with thoughtful comments, Sievers said, but one reader misinterpreted the e-mail and forwarded it to friends with an alarmist note to telephone the program, because it was about to slam Gore and call for him to concede.

“Anyone who has ever seen ‘Nightline’ knows that we would never do something like that,” says Sievers, who was also concerned that the viewers didn’t wait to see what the show actually reported. “We stand behind our work,” he says, “but at least let us do the work.”