All eyes are on the news on Election Day as votes are tallied to determine whether President Donald

Trump gets four more years in the White House or former Vice President Joe Biden returns to the Oval
Office as president.

This year, media coverage may be more critical than ever as an explosion of mail-in voting makes it more
likely the tallying will extend days, or longer, beyond election night. We’re documenting notable
coverage here throughout the day.

See something we should know about? Send tips to news@poynter.org.

And join us here for Election Day day two as the tallying continues on Wednesday.

Trump baselessly claims election ‘fraud’ as votes continue to be counted

President Donald Trump speaks in the East Room of the White House, early Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020, in
Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Just before 2:30 a.m., President Donald Trump called the election “a fraud on the American public” and
said, “We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.”

His remarks before a crowd at the White House came after he tweeted nearly two hours earlier, “We
are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election.” Twitter appended the warning that the
president’s tweet “is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.”

Journalists were quick to counter Trump’s baseless claims of fraud even as he continued his remarks.
NBC News cut away from the East Room to explain that votes are still being tabulated.
Trump named multiple states where he is projected to win, but he made no reference to Fox News —
which stood alone in calling Arizona for Joe Biden late Tuesday.

Trump’s comments came nearly two hours after the Democrat delivered remarks in Delaware.

Political analysts expressed surprise that Biden spoke before the incumbent, noting that in 2016, Hillary
Clinton sent a representative before she conceded.

“We knew because of the unprecedented early vote and the mail-in vote that it was going to take a
while,” Biden said. “We’re going to have to be patient until the hard work of tallying votes is finished.
And it ain’t over until every vote is counted.”

Biden ended his brief remarks by saying that it’s not for either candidate “to declare who’s won this
election. That’s the decision of the American people.”

— DORIS TRUONG, Director of Training and Diversity (2:52 a.m. Eastern Wednesday)

Fox News stands alone with its Arizona call

Fox News called the presidential race in Arizona for Joe Biden just before 11:30 p.m. and has stood alone
in that call. That has led to some friction with other vote callers and the Trump campaign.

CNN’s Jim Acosta tweeted that the campaign is “furious” with Fox and quoted a Trump adviser as saying,
“Words cannot describe the anger.”

The New York Times’ Nate Cohn said Fox’s call was “too fast” for him. “It reminds me of when they
called Wisconsin for Trump early in ’16, when he was up like 4 points at 70% counted,” Cohn tweeted.
“It worked out! But that was not a 99.99% certainty situation …”
Fox News’ election experts explained the call on-air.

— REN LaFORME, MANAGING EDITOR (12:54 a.m. Eastern Wednesday)

Have patience

Rita Brown, a supporter of Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden, watches
election results at a watch party in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020. (AP Photo/David
Goldman)

CNN’s John King said it over and over and over again: “We need patience.”

Who was he talking to? Everybody.

As we approach midnight, it’s becoming clear that we’re not going to know who won the presidential
election anytime soon.

And we shouldn’t be surprised by any of that.

For weeks, the media has been preaching patience, that we might not know who the winner is on
election night or even well after midnight.

But did we really believe that?

Based on social media, you could sense the frustration of citizens wanting to know and wanting to know
NOW(!) who the next president will be. But, we’ve known all along — or should have — that adding up
the totals in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin was going to take a while. Throw in that different
parts of the states are added up at different times, and there’s a mixture of early votes and same-day
votes, and that even early results really didn’t offer up much understanding.

So where does that leave us? It could be a while. And by a while, we’re talking about another day or
two.

Just like we’ve been warned for the past couple of weeks.

— TOM JONES, Poynter Senior Writer (11:37 p.m. Eastern)

Remember: This could take a while

Be patient on election night 2020. Counting the returns will take time. We published an article with that
headline on Sept. 8 and have resurfaced it many times since then. And we’ll point to it again tonight.

A burst pipe in Fulton County, Georgia, which accounts for a lot of Atlanta, has delayed ballot counting
there. Some Pennsylvania counties won’t begin counting mail-in votes until Wednesday. A few of the
battleground states look too close to call. And that’s all complicated by the massive increase in mail-in
voting around the country this year.

There are no official results on election night — and there never have been.

So it’s fine to stay glued to your favorite TV channel or news website, but remember to get up, stretch
and drink some water every now and then. This could take a while.

— REN LaFORME, MANAGING EDITOR (10:55 p.m. Eastern)

Why does everyone trust the Associated Press for calling races?

The most reliable information about election results is the confirmed and official results from the
government and election offices nationwide, which is a process guided by the Constitution. But that all
takes about a month.

So, about a century ago, news outlets began gathering election results across the nation in an effort to
get an answer for the impatient public who just didn’t want to wait that long, according to Sally Buzbee,
executive editor of the Associated Press. The AP has been leading this charge and “counting the vote”
since 1848.

AP has been the gold standard for calling races for decades. Many (if not most) news organizations look
to them on election night and share the AP’s reporting and election calls with their audiences.