Friday
Oct082004
Is the FIX IN Again? AP Publishes News Story that says: "Bush Wins Election"
Friday, October 8, 2004 at 09:44AM
Is the FIX IN Again? AP Publishes News Story that says:
"Bush wins election, Republicans keep House/Senate."
Earlier today (10/7/2004), the AP pushed a story to it's affiliates
with the headline "Bush wins election, Republicans keep House/Senate."
The story appeared briefly on the WBAY-TVwebsite [here 
]before
it was taken down. The lead: "President Bush has won re-election as
president by a 47 percent to 43 percent margin in the popular vote...
Bush has won 324 electoral votes in 33 states. He is leading in 4
states for a total of 43 more electoral votes". [more ]
- SEE a screenshot of the article [here ] and [here ] WBAY TV Issued a correction and offered the following explanation:
- "Correction: President Bush Did Not Win Election on October 7. With
less than a month before the presidential election, an Associated
Press test article declaring President Bush the winner was picked up by
WBAY.com's automated system. The article was not recognized by our web
host's system as a test message. The mistake was picked up by a
discussion group on Daily Kos, prompting a phone call that alerted us
to the problem. Our web host, WorldNow, removed the story in
less than five minutes. The article appeared on WBAY.com for 35
minutes. WBAY apologizes for the error, and we took quick action to
correct it. The Associated Press tests election results about four
times a week leading up to elections, especially one as crucial as a
presidential election, to help TV stations and newspapers make sure
they are receiving the numbers. The numbers are random with every test;
if this error happened a day sooner or a day later, it could've been
Senator Kerry or Ralph Nader who was declared the winner." [uh-huh ]
- Text of original article [here]
