Internet "blogs" ended up with egg on their face this week after releasing early exit-poll data from Tuesday's vote suggesting Senator John Kerry was on his way to a victory against US President George W. Bush.
Blogs, short for Web logs, became a major phenomenon in this year's campaign. But the mistakes, while not of the magnitude of the 2000 election fiasco, opened a debate over the credibility of the sites and of the exit polls being used.
Although the preliminary exit poll data were not widely used by television networks and other mainstream media, the misleading news spread like wildfire and even prompted a selloff late in the day on Tuesday on Wall Street when it appeared Bush was in trouble.
One news site distributing the early poll data, the Drudge Report, attracted 978,000 hits on Tuesday, and several other blogs collectively attracted more than a half a million visitors, according to comScore Networks.
"People jumped the gun and started interpreting the poll data before it had been completed," said Michael Cornfield, a senior research consultant at the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
"There's a game in Washington -- you feel like an insider if you get the early data and distribute it, and I did myself ... I've been writing e-mail notes all morning apologizing," he said.
But Cornfield said the release did not have the same impact as the mistaken call of Florida in the 2000 election.
"When it goes through television networks, it acquires the authority the bloggers don't have," he said. "It also affects people who are voting ... if a network calls a state [there is the feeling that] it's over."
Still, there was no doubt about the impact of the blogs.
"The thing about blogs, of course, is that a hot story tends to spread exponentially, so by early evening, the early exit-poll results were all over the blogosphere," said Steve Outing, a senior editor at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.
"Bloggers, in particular, are loose cannons when it comes to information that established media seeks to control. Mostly independents with no corporate masters to abide -- and often no traditional journalistic training or standards -- bloggers cannot be expected to play by old media rules," Outing said in a Web column.
Cornfield said he believes the exit-poll data -- a pool effort of the major media -- was generally accurate but only after late-day voters were included.
Still, bloggers and others posting messages on blogs were smarting and trying to find an explanation, with some suggesting manipulation of electronic voting systems.
"Analysis of the polling data versus actual data and voting systems supports the hypothesis that e-voting may be to blame in the discrepancies," said one Web poster, identified only as "SoCalDemocrat."
"Nevada has e-voting but with verified receipts. In that state the exit polling matches the actual results within 0.1 percent accuracy. However for other swing states Bush has unexplainable leads."
"Notice, if you will, that states with a narrow or wide Bush margin of victory NOT called Ohio or Florida, project perfectly," said another Web poster, London Yank. "It is a clear and blatant sign of voter fraud."
Cornfield said that he did not believe the outcome of the vote had been influenced by the early release or by fraud.
"I'm willing to believe there was a level of fraud in Ohio and Florida, and so did the Kerry campaign," Cornfield said. "But they did their arithmetic, and if there was fraud it was not enough to change the results."
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS