CNN's presidential election coverage was "unnecessarily torturous" -- like being dipped in boiling oil

Vulture

"Several of the closest, most significant battleground states are still counting votes, and it could take a long time to have a result," says Kathryn VanArendonk. "And yet in spite of this completely inevitable moment of limbo, experiencing it in real time last night on CNN felt like being slowly flayed alive, or perhaps buried under a suffocating pile of county maps, each of them stalled at 82 percent returned. There’s a sense of inevitability about that, too — a sense that of course there would be this excruciating tick-tock as the polls gradually close, of course the only way CNN could’ve covered this is to stand in front of a giant magic map and watch breathlessly as states go from blue to red and back again. But the specific programming choices on CNN last night exacerbated it all. Some of those decisions were typical for CNN’s usual election coverage; some of them were clearly made with the particularities of last night in mind. Together, they created an Election Night experience that was strangely intimate and unnecessarily torturous. There are three ways to think about the issues with CNN’s election coverage, a.k.a. its thumbscrew in the form of a newscast: the basics, the details, and the timeline. The biggest choice CNN made between 7 p.m. and midnight last night was arguably defensible: It became the John King Magic Board show, an hours-long stretch of nearly unbroken closeups of John King’s upper body as he stood in front of his large touchscreen map, zooming in and out of states and counties, flipping back and forth between 2016 and 2020 results, again and again circling Miami-Dade County and drawing two roughly parallel lines between Pennsylvania and Minnesota. This is fundamental Election Night coverage stuff, especially for cable news. Fox and MSNBC have their own versions of the Magic Board Man (Bill Hemmer and Steve Kornacki, respectively). John King and his giant map were as certain to be major figures on CNN last night as the sun was to rise in the morning. But it matters how you deploy the Magic Board. On the other big cable channels, Steve Kornacki and Bill Hemmer were frequent but not constant figures. The overall coverage was more of a mixture, balancing that obsessive map-based focus with voices from panelists who could occasionally hop on to say things like 'and remember, most of the early vote hasn’t been counted yet,' or, 'this is exactly what we expected to happen.' The trouble with CNN’s version, with its breathless laser focus on John King and his very underwhelming sidekick Wolf Blitzer, is that King could say 'we lack context' until the cows came home, and he’d still be standing in front of a giant map colored with stark reds and blues. The words and the imagery did not match. Even worse, King stood in front of that board and repeatedly declared the election to be 'interesting,' 'exciting,' and — several times — 'fun.' The intense dissonance between King’s happy good times in front of the board and the viewer-side sensation of having one’s skin be slowly peeled off is gross enough on its surface. But it gets more upsetting when you step back and consider that King’s fun is coming because of how incomplete the results are."

ALSO:

• Fox News sets record for most-watched primetime Election Night Coverage in cable news history: Fox News averaged 13.7 million, topping CNN's 9.1 million and MSNBC's 7.3 million. ABC was tops among network news broadcasts with 6.1 million.
• 50.1 million watched Election Night 2020, down 22% from Election Night 2016
• Why watching Election Night coverage makes you feel like garbage: "Why does this steady and unceasing drip of seemingly contradictory information feel so uniquely awful?" asks Rebecca Jennings. "The short answer: Human beings hate uncertainty. For the long answer, I called Dr. Kevin Antshel, director of clinical training in the psychology department at Syracuse University, who explained that as life has grown relatively more stable over the course of history, people crave that stability even more. Now, with the option to seek out unlimited sources of news at all hours of the day, those of us who crave information are stuck in one giant doomscroll. Luckily, Antshel also had some tips on how to look away."
• Networks struggled to cover "twists" that were both shocking and unsurprising: "The thing was, the TV network anchor desks already had the forecast," says James Poniewozik. "We had heard for months about how the pandemic would upset patterns of vote counting, how a “red mirage” might create the illusion that President Trump was carrying states early with same-day votes, that the president would undermine the democratic process, that election night might stretch out to lengths usually seen in the Arctic Circle. Sure, the polls didn’t call this exact outcome — but 2016 had told us that the polls could be wrong. But while it’s one thing to know that election night could be pandemonium, it’s another thing to experience it. In an election when context — not just the numbers but also what the numbers meant — was more important than ever, the networks often struggled to tell their audiences what they knew, what they didn’t know and what they knew they didn’t know."
• Fox News declaring Arizona for Joe Biden flipped the mood at the White House: "Inside the East Room, the mood was upbeat as hundreds of people, including cabinet secretaries, ambassadors and former officials who have remained loyal to Mr. Trump, mingled and dined on sliders and french fries. Officials who had been pessimistic about the president’s re-election chances suddenly started to picture four more years in power," report The New York Times' Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman. "That mirage of victory was pierced when Fox News called Arizona for former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at 11:20 p.m., with just 73 percent of the state’s vote counted. Mr. Trump and his advisers erupted at the news. If it was true that Arizona was lost, it would call into doubt on any claim of victory the president might be able to make. What ensued for Mr. Trump was a night of angry calls to Republican governors and advice from campaign aides that he ignored, leading to a middle-of-the-night presidential briefing in which he made a reckless and unsubstantiated string of remarks about the democratic process. Standing in the East Room at 2:30 a.m., he dismissed the election as a 'fraud' and claimed he wanted to stop the counting of votes and leave the results to the Supreme Court."
• Why MSNBC's Steve Kornacki is so great: "In a medium that prizes empty rhetoric, Kornacki is unfailingly clear about what he knows, what’s possible for anyone to know, and what’s a total guess," says Josh Levin. "He’s careful and wise, the kind of guy you’d want assessing what’s wrong with your fan belt, your nuclear reactor, or your representative democracy."
• An ode to CNN's John King and his Magic Wall: "Yes, John King’s definition of 'fun' is up for debate, but watching him work his Magic Wall on Tuesday night, for starters, was nonetheless engaging — and entertaining, especially in the early going when a breathless Wolf Blitzer would march over to his colleague for the 20th check-in on Florida in as many minutes," says Matt Webb Mitovich. "Patience for Blitzer’s Dory-like memory (only four percent of Miami-Dade County is in, man!) is clearly among King’s virtues, right alongside his mastery of the touch screen."
• MSNBC finally gave Steve Kornacki a break, while CNN's John King took a 2-1/2 hour nap and Fox News' Bill Hemmer slept for 45 minutes
• Fox News once again had the best Election Night drama
• Twitter declares John King the true winner of Election Night
• Gayle King: "I slept in my clothes and my Spanx" after Election Night
• Why was CNN's Election Night coverage sponsored by Borat 2?
• Joy Reid refers to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as "Uncle Clarence"
• Anderson Cooper accidentally calls Twitter "Clitter" on CNN