Fox News Coverage of Election Night

On Election Night I tuned in to Fox News to watch their coverage of the Presidential election. Knowing that Fox News sways more to the Republican side, I assumed that they would focus more on John McCain than Barack Obama. However, I must say that in my opinion, their coverage was equally distributed between the two candidates.

Fox News had various correspondents located at Obama's headquarters, as well as at John McCain's headquarters. At times during their on-going coverage the in-studio host, Brit Hume, would check in with the correspondents to get a feel for what was going on at each candidates headquarters. At times, I felt that host Brit Hume was rather unorganized. At certain times he was unsure as to where the coverage was going to next. In my opinion, he could have done a better job of controlling the program and preparing for each upcoming segment. As the outcome of the election drew nearer, the coverage focused on John McCain primarily because he would be making a speech declaring that Barack Obama would be victorious. Once McCain delivered his address, the coverage was dedicated solely to Obama and his acceptance speech.

In my opinion, the layout that Fox News used to display the incoming votes from each state was somewhat confusing. At the bottom of the screen, they had a bar that was split into three sections. On the far right was the total electoral votes for each candidate. The only issue I had with this was the size of the numbers. I felt that the numbers were not big enough, and I had a difficult time deciphering a few of the numbers. The section on the far left was dedicated to tallying the votes for each candidate by state. The middle section was used to show the number of votes for the races for seats in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

In regards to the coverage on their website, I felt that Fox News could have done a better job. They had a map of the United States that was used to show the incoming votes from each of the states as their respective polls closed. However, the map updated sporadically and was never in sync with what was being shown on their television broadcast. The websites count of the total electoral votes for each candidate was always behind what was being shown on television. One facet of the website that I did like was the map that broke down the candidates votes by each county of every state. I thought it was interesting to be able to see whether my county voted for McCain or Obama. It allowed me to see if the candidate I voted for garnered the most votes in my county. Although there were some aspects of the website that I did enjoy, I thought they could have done a better job of updating their website.

As a whole, I felt that Fox News and their corresponding website did a fair job in covering this year's Presidential election.