Ten years ago, when the Associated Press declared the winners of the 2014 midterm elections, the alerts it sent out were little more than headlines: So-and-so won such-and-such election in this or that state. The updates were short and to the point — no more than 120 characters, usually — and the AP didn’t see any reason to add more detail. People trusted the electoral process, and they trusted the AP’s long history of calling elections big and small across the country.
But that was 10 years ago. Now, said David Scott, VP and head of news strategy and operations at the AP, four years of election conspiracies have eroded that trust. “Our audiences demand more,” Scott said on a recent panel about how election calling works hosted by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
