Considering the high stakes, Election Night TV news coverage felt way too normal

The Hollywood Reporter

"It was bizarre and off-putting (Tuesday) night — after the strangeness of the last four years and 2020 in particular and this election season most of all — to see newscasters treat this like the usual horse race," says Inkoo Kang. "I’ll be honest: Election nights tend to bring out the worst in TV news, which is why I avoid day-of television coverage as much as I can. What I saw last night was pretty much what we see every four years: data that doesn’t quite translate to information ('With 3 percent of precincts reporting, the count is …'), pointless hypothetical scenarios and time-filling pantomimes of authority interspersed with the omnipresent phrase 'too early to call.' Perhaps there’s someone out there who was comforted by this show of 'normalcy,' but it just recalled for me the first two years of the Trump presidency, when the mainstream news institutions took way too long to adjust to the stream of lies and media manipulation coming out of the White House. The cognitive dissonance of being told for weeks that we shouldn’t expect results on Election Day and watching these journalists largely ignore or sidestep that reality was too much. The networks’ usual numbers-only treatment also repelled me because it projected a lack of stakes, as if Biden v. Trump was just another sports match and not a deciding factor in the future of American democracy. All the talk of 'This random county is like this' and 'This group could be key to x’s victory in y' conveyed a weightlessness to the election that no one I know feels. Of course, election night coverage isn’t traditionally analytical or editorial about the issues, but there must be some sort of happy medium between substance and the horse race."

ALSO:

• TV news is stuck in a "stuck in the same lack-of-new-information limbo" as the election results: "2020 isn’t done with us yet. The cruelest year’s new diabolical twist: election purgatory," says Lorraine Ali. "Intellectually, most of us knew that the presidential race would likely stretch well past Nov. 3. We were warned by polling wonks and political pundits, by Fox News and Trevor Noah. But that hasn’t stopped the hours since the end of election day proper from feeling like we’re trapped at the scene of an off-road accident, hanging upside down in our car, teetering on a cliff’s edge, engines revving, waiting for help to arrive." She adds: "It feels like another layer of shutdown as we huddle in our homes, waiting for word of what comes next. And like much of the nation, I’m miserable, no matter how much residual Halloween candy I consume in lieu of actual meals, how many times I break the rules and let the pit bulls on the bed, or how many times I try and distract myself with second and third viewings of The Vow. Understanding the psychology of cult indoctrination feels particularly important right about now. Anchors, guest panels and on-screen analysts are clearly stuck in the same lack-of-new-information limbo about the election results, but they’re struggling to cope with the dead air on air. Fox personalities such as Neil Cavuto spoke of this 'crisis, or whatever you want to call it' on Wednesday and continued to defer to the network’s exhausted decision desk while CNN focused on Trump’s 'saber-rattling' as its anchors stalled for time between results."
• Here are the Top 5 moments from the first 24 hours of Election Night coverage