WASHINGTON — A little more than a week after television networks called the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden, top executives and anchors at Fox News held an after-action meeting to figure out how they had messed up. Not because they had gotten the key call wrong — but because they had gotten it right. And they had gotten it right before anyone else. Typically, it is a point of pride for a news network to be the first to project election winners. But Fox News is no typical news network, a
WASHINGTON — A little more than a week after television networks called the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden, top executives and anchors at Fox News held an after-action meeting to figure out how they had messed up.
“Listen, it’s one of the sad realities: If we hadn’t called Arizona, those three or four days following Election Day, our ratings would have been bigger,” Scott said. “The mystery would have been still hanging out there.” In the crosshairs now is Scott, who joined the network at its inception in 1996 as a programming assistant and worked her way up to become CEO in 2018. Media analysts have speculated that she may take the fall; Murdoch testified in a deposition that executives who knowingly allowed lies to be broadcast “should be reprimanded, maybe got rid of.” But Fox later put out word that she was not in danger.
But Friday night, Nov. 6, when Sammon’s team was ready to call Nevada for Biden, sealing his victory, Wallace refused to air it. “I’m not there yet since it’s for all the marbles — just a heavier burden than an individual state call,” Wallace wrote in a text message obtained by the Times. On Nov. 16, Scott and Wallace convened the Zoom meeting to discuss the Arizona decision. Sammon and Arnon Mishkin, the director of the Decision Desk, were included. Chris Stirewalt, the political editor who had gone on air to defend the call, was not.
Neither she nor Baier explained exactly what they meant by another “layer.” A person who was in the meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions said Saturday that Baier had been talking about process because he was upset the Decision Desk had made the Arizona call without letting the anchors know first.
Scott pressed Sammon to admit that Arizona “became much closer than even you anticipated it becoming.” Scott asserted that CNN had delayed to hold viewer attention. “CNN, historically, I think, has always been late because — purely for ratings,” she said. “And I think you have to ask yourself: Is that a good enough reason? Trust, public trust, viewership — I mean, there’s different parameters.”
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