The data nerd of NBC News, Steve Kornacki, is preparing to sleep at his desk in 30 Rockefeller Plaza — for days on end, if need be. CNN is adding to its bench of legal experts in case of disputed counts in swing states.
The Associated Press, whose election calls are widely amplified by major media outlets, has determined it needs to devote more people and other resources to explain its decisions to readers.
Election Day is the news industry’s biggest night, when voters rely on media outlets to declare state-by-state winners and keep score in the Electoral College.
But as presidential polls project a razor-thin finish that could take days to determine — and as baseless claims about voting fraud run rampant — news executives acknowledge that the onus is on them to help viewers understand the nuances of the vote-tallying process.
As a result, almost every major news organization is putting contingency plans in place to push back against a gale-force storm of misinformation and ensure that audiences trust their coverage. Their efforts will probably stretch far beyond Nov. 5, as absentee ballots are counted and close races potentially face legal reviews.
“We live in an environment where misinformation travels really fast, and we understand that the public is confused,” Julie Pace, the executive editor of The A.P., said in an interview. “There’s distrust in elections — there’s distrust in institutions in general.”
“We’ve assumed that because we’ve been doing it for so long, it was understood by the public, and that when we called a race, people believed it,” Ms. Pace added. “And we know we have got to do more than that.”…
Much of the public doubt in the news media has been sown by Mr. Trump, whose insistence that the 2020 presidential election was rigged has remained a staple of his political talk. Polls show that many Trump supporters continue to believe his outlandish claims of voter fraud, virtually all of which were eventually dismissed by courts.
Over the past several months, Mr. Trump and his allies have steadily built up an infrastructure to fight back against an outcome that displeases him this November….