Prior to the 2004 presidential election, the major television networks assured us they would not forget the embarrassment from the 2000 contest.

They had learned their lesson after mistakenly calling the winners in Florida multiple times. At best, it was a moment that had done tremendous damage to the networks' credibility. At worst, it could have affected the outcome of the race by keeping some voters home.

But now, in the midst of one of the most compelling presidential primaries in recent memory, we seem to be sliding back toward the old ways of covering election night results.

On Feb. 5, I was struck by how the networks called the New York primary for Sen. Hillary Clinton at 9 p.m., exactly when the polls closed here. Sure, it turns out they were correct, but it also turns out that Sen. Barack Obama actually fared rather well here. It wasn't the blowout the networks' exit polls must have been showing.

I saw a more disturbing situation unfold last Tuesday night, when the network I was watching not only called the race at the exact moment polls closed, but also kept saying prior to that moment who they felt had won. With a wink and a nod, they explained that they couldn't make their official call until the voters had actually stopped voting.

Let me take you back to February 2001, during a congressional hearing on what went wrong with the network television coverage of the 2000 election night. Read the words of Joan Konner, who co-authored an independent report for CNN at the time.

“Our recommendations included the following: that exit polling no longer be used to project our call winners of states, and that exit polling be used for analysis only; that returns from sample or key precincts no longer be used for projecting or calling winners. We believe that model precincts are subject to too many errors and can lead to faulty calls. We recommend that all calls be based on actual vote counts and that no calls be made in states where polls are still open. We recommend that no call be made until all available sources of information are checked.”

It's clear many of those guidelines are no longer being followed, and I fear the industry is setting itself up for another mistake this election season.

Everyone knows the reason the networks are scrambling to make these calls. Konner said it perfectly in that hearing: “We stated that the desire to be first, or at least not to be consistently behind the others, led the networks to make calls unwisely, based on sketchy and sometimes mistaken information. We reported an impulse-to-speed over accuracy. And we attributed that impulse to the business imperatives of television news to win the highest ratings, which is not a journalistic standard, but a commercial standard.”

But let me ask you this. Which network leads this primary season in calling races first? Most people, including myself, have no clue.

The minute one of those networks screws up a call, though, is the minute they can kiss their ratings goodbye.

Executive editor Jeremy Boyer's columns appear Saturdays in The Citizen and he can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 231 or jeremy.boyer@lee.net