Reporters Plan Marathon Coverage Of The Big Game
Michael Hedges November 2, 2020 - Follow on Twitter
News organizations have borrowed heavily from sports reporting over the years in presenting election coverage. There are scoreboards filled with ever changing poll data. Debates are staged like wrestling matches, occasionally with fake blood. Commentators scream with every goal. It all looks like showbiz. Audiences love it.
 The forthcoming US elections are magnets for foreign news outlets. Many have augmented bureaus that usually file the occasional report of interest to readers, listeners and viewers back home with high-profile correspondents and multimedia crews. To be sure, some have had correspondents for months scouring the American countryside, literally, for the requisite “explainer” interviews in Arkansas, Montana or Ohio seeking colorful illuminative anecdotes. But, this week all of that attention turns to the big game. As the New York Times wrote (October 31), “A frazzled world holds its breath.”
Ukraine TV channel 1+1 is sending a crew for live broadcasts of evening news program TSN on election day (November 3) and the day after. They will locate in New York City “in the open air on the main square of the city - Times Square,” noted Telekritika (October 29). The host will be Lidiya Taran, who has appropriate sports reporting experience.
Other Ukraine news outlets are also reporting the event. Ukraine 24 will begin broadcasting late in the evening local time and continue, perhaps, forever. “We plan to be the first in Ukraine to name the new President of the United States," said the host of the presentation Yevgeny Kiselyov. Many observers suggest a final result will not be known for several days if not weeks. He promised special live reports from across the US.
Spain’s three main television broadcasters - TVE, Antena 3 and laSexta - are planning several days of special coverage. TVE’s coverage begins Sunday night (November 1), having moved Rome correspondent Lorenzo Milá to Washington DC to lead with reporters in New York and scatter about. Antena 3’s coverage will also be based in Washington DC. Its main wall-to-wall will begin early Wednesday morning. LaSexta’s principal news host Antonio García Ferreras will present “a marathon” from 11:30 pm Tuesday night (local time in Spain) until 2:00 pm the next day, noted El Televisero (October 30). LaSexta’s coverage will include reports from Los Angeles.
"We usually evaluate election reporting afterwards and in previous years our assessment has been that the balance has been good according to the viewers,” said Swedish broadcaster TV4 program director Viveka Hansson, quoted by journalisten.se (October 28), “but of course there may be different opinions here. For our part, however, this does not mean a strained news budget and more resources for other news because the channel injects extra money for the election, but there will be a little less entertainment these days because the election occupies a large part of the tableau.”
As in many other places, coverage of the US elections has already been robust in Sweden. Some reporters find this a bit out of balance. “The danger is that Swedes will become idiots who know all the tricky details of so-called swing states, but no idea about the politics of China, India or Europe,” offered Dagens Nyheters correspondent Henrik Brandao Jönsson, normally stationed in Rio de Janeiro.
But those “swing states” continued to attract foreign news outlets right up to election day. Youngstown, Ohio has been particularly attractive, reported Youngstown Vindicator politics reporter David Skolnick. A visiting Belgian news magazine reporter admitted part of the reason for choosing the city was a Bruce Springsteen song. The crew from Japanese broadcaster NHK was most interested in a nearby closed automobile plant. Interviews in the area showed voters attacking “the other candidate rather than talking about the policies of their favorite,” observed Slovak daily SME reporter Lukas Ondercanin. All reporters in story said people in Youngstown were very nice.
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News agencies and organizations have long sent reporters and crews into journalistic hot spots. It has long been accepted that reporters in conflict zones are civilians, not combatants, and as such are afforded certain protections. These distinctions have blurred in recent years; protests and demonstrations characterized as war zones, reporters as adversaries. Authoritarians and their supporters do not like the photographs splashed in international media.
Free and fair elections are coveted by those invested in democratic principles. For others, not so much. News media plays an enormous role, usually beneficial but not always. New media - social and such - is challenging the old order. Fortunately, a select group of independent organizations take on job of pointing out the successes and shortcomings.
Some authoritarian leaders are quite clever, some not so much. The clever ones have learned how to take control of the news flow, often by eliminating the critics. The very clever allow a few outlets of opposing views to remain for largely cosmetic reasons. Cutting off the internet no longer succeeds as the digital savvy know all the tricks. The less clever are even jumping back to centuries past to cut off postal delivery service. But when all else fails, dictators will resort to the tried and true: batons and bullets. It’s an old movie.
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