CLEAR DAYS ON THE JOURNALISM SCENE

Nancy Franklin's lead is (as SKL would say) "crashingly banal":

"Though there has not yet been a poll to prove the validity of this claim, it’s probably fair to say that most Americans will not be glad to hear that the 2008 campaign started on Wednesday, November 3rd."

Versions of that sentiment appear the week after every presidential election. But this sentence, buried deep below, is far worse, and people have been fired for less:

"The television news organizations, having burned themselves in the 2000 election by calling Florida too early, and calling it wrong, all bent over backward to hold off on projecting outcomes."

Did ANY of the New Yorker's three zillion editors blanch at that one? "Calling it WRONG..." Excuse me, but Gore WON Florida, the mistake was in calling it too early, but never WRONG. It was wrong only in the same sense that the Supreme Court's decision to annoint Bush was WRONG.