***I know of a local newspaper where the headline "Too close to call" at midnight became "Bush wins at the wire" at around 3:00 a.m., "Bush projected to win" an hour later, and finally "Too close to call" again when the last morning papers rolled off the presses in early morning. The story proved equally elusive for hundreds of newspapers across the country.***

GOOD morning, we do not have a winner! This was the lead story of every morning TV show in America on Wednesday. Americans went to the polls Tuesday expecting a tight presidential race, but even then they got more than they bargained for.

The attention of the entire country is now on Florida. Election results announced after the vote on Tuesday showed George Bush edging out Al Gore by a meager 1784 votes in a state with 8.75 million registered voters. This narrow margin triggered an automatic recount of votes in the state. The recount showed a narrowing of the margin. As of this writing. Bush's lead over Gore has dwindled to 274 votes with thousands of absentee ballots still waiting to be counted.

It will take at least another week to find out who the next US President will be. Given that the vote tally Is so close in Florida, election officials will obviously wait for the overseas absentee ballots, which can arrive up to 10 days after the election and still be counted. These ballots typically include many from members of the armed forces, who tend to vote Republican, and some from residents staying In Israel, who tend to vote Democrat.

It is possible that Bush could still win In Florida and become the next President by getting more than 270 electoral votes. Latest estimates show that Gore is about 200.000 votes ahead of Bush in the nationwide tally, a small but comfortable margin. If Gore maintains that lead but loses the Florida recount, he could become the first person in more than a hundred years to lose the presidency even while gaining the most votes nationwide.

In this column, 1 had men-

Honed the possibility of such a scenario (DS. October 29). But I didn't anticipate that scenario to become a reality. Anyway. I intended to write today about the role of the TV networks and print media in creating confusion not only among the voters and audiences. but also among the candidates. It was an election night of frenzied and embarrassing gaffes and retractions for television news. It was a night when the presses actually stopped, when reporters urged editors to hold on a minute, when editors rewrote banner headlines and then rewrote them again. The TV networks awarded the state of

Florida initially to Gore, then retracted and awarded the state - and the White House - in Wednesday's pre-dawn hours to Bush, then finally threw up their hands and said they didn't

For newspapers. deadlines passed, and as they did. two fundamental edicts of the news business remained locked In conflict: Be first, and be right. The problem for the news media was that the story wouldn't stay

put: it ebbed and flowed, and as it did. the media scrambled to keep up. The confusion in the media affected even the candidates. Around 2:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, after CNN and four other major TV networks announced George Bush to be the projected winner of the election. Gore telephoned Bush and con-

ceded victor}'. This Inspired countless newspaper around Hie country to go to press with headlines erroneously declaring that outcome. BUSH APPEARS TO DEFEAT GORE, said the New York Times". But within an hour, new reports from Florida prompted Gore to call Bush for the second time and take back

what he had said about conceding the election to Bush. The reversals were Just as startling on television, radio and the Internet. And hungry for information, the public sampled the full buffet of media.

Personally. I know of a local newspaper where the headline Too close to call" al midnight became "Bush wins at the wire at around 3:00 a.m., "Bush projected to win" an hour later, and finally "Too close to call" again when the last morning papers rolled off the presses in early morning. The story proved equally elusive for hundreds of newspapers across the country.

The erroneous headlines appeared most commonly in newspapers that had Hie ability to push deadlines deep into the night.

Misguided headlines appeared on some of the most prestigious newspapers in the country. Later in correcting the print editions, some newspapers not only rewrote headl ines to reflect the uncertain outcome but also apologised for the inaccuracy of earlier copies.

The missteps have sparked

recriminations and soul-searching. with media watchdogs and some TV network executives blaming television news division for jumping the gun in their haste to call a decisive state contest first. In the western world, where TV rating is crucial for attracting advertisement money., the TV * networks fiercely compile with one another to be the first in breaking any news.

A clear link can now be established for the embarrassing mishap that ihe news media experienced: the miscount and wrong assumptionsand exit polling by a polling consortium that the TV networks relied on to call the race In Florida; the network predictions that then emboldened print and other media to project a Bush victory: and finally Gore's own concession call, which seemed to seal the election until he called back to retract it Ultimately, however, the media cannot deflect the blame for the wrong information. Their first job Is to get the news right, and they didn't do that. Early on election night - too early - the major TV networks projected Gore as the winner in Florida, only to retract the projection a few hours later. This misreading of a key state in a presidential election badly compromised what the media in any country need more than anything else: credlbilit.The American news media, in their quest to become the first to break a news, are racing to come to judgement and. in the process, sometimes giving people inaccurate informa- . tion. The election night expert- < ence will probably set off some changes in how the news media provide information. They need to return to the fundamental edicts of the news business: Be first: but. more importantly, be right.