NEW YORK CITY -- Several major media personalities are seeking amends for what they admit may have been misleading election night coverage. As coverage began in the evening and spilled over into the early morning, the results were not certain while the nation needed answers.
   
    Dan Rather reported that the nation plunged into chaos, with "armies fighting major battles in Spokane, Topeka, New York and Los Angeles. We estimate that 500,000 Americans have already been killed in this conflict."
   
    Then, what is called a "bumper screen" was displayed in the broadcast, where "CBS news: Civil War / Anarchy is upon us" was written in pastel cursive script on a pink background with small black and white video clips of grim war scenes and explosions playing in small boxes shifted hypnotically across the screen. Rather continued, "Now this is the our nation's first civil war in nearly a hundred and eighty years; now that's really something."
   
    CBS then showed a hastily thrown together photo-documentary of the first US civil war, showing yellowed pictures of ship wreckage, demolished southern industrial centers and piles of bodies of Confederate soldiers awaiting burial after the battle of Antietam. "These images really are incredible," said Rather, "I think we're going to see a lot of 'fireworks' in the next few days."
   
    Rather has been chided by the Center for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting for repeatedly calling the Bush and Gore camps "armies," referring to the candidate's wives as "fearsome dreadnought warships" and shreiking "the Union is dissolved!" instead of "the voting results are unclear at this time." The veteran reporter later issued a formal apology, stating that he had "no idea" he was saying all of those things.
   
    MSNBC covered the event in its usual format, where two fundamentally opposed, uneducated people without credentials hurl sacks of shit at each other in an ongoing 74 hour marathon. "Your eyes... I'm going to claw them out..." said a Texas County Sheriff, pitted against a Westchester county housewife, debating the ongoing Florida recounts. "I hope you can fight as well as you can cry," said the Sheriff.
   
   

CBS showed this civil war-era photograph in an election night music montage segment titled 'A look ahead.'

"After decimation, those who are unlucky enough to survive will subsist on a grueling regiment of rats, moss, dirt and tree bark as the swarms of locusts carrying flesh eating bacteria descend," said a somber Peter Jennings around 4:00 am on ABC. "The Earth will be consumed in the flames, and we will all toil in the Lake of Fire. Keep your dial on ABC or you'll suffer the cruelest fate of all- we'll tell you more after the commercial break."
   
    Several months later Jennings admitted that some of the information he reported was of questionable veracity. "Well, you know nobody in this business calls themselves infallible," the anchor said in an interview. "These things happen. [Mistakes], you can call them, yes they can happen to anybody."
   
    NBC anchor Tom Brokaw has held a more defiant stance to media watchdogs. "We deny any irresponsibiliy in our coverage of 'NBC news: Apocalypse right now / Run for your lives!!'" he said in a statement. "The report was based on fact."
   
    In response to the chaos, federal and Floridian government bodies are proposing a sputter of election reforms. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) promised to introduce legislation that would disband the Electoral College. Sen. Robert Bennet (R-UT) proposed banning exit polling conducted within 1000 feet of an election site. "An American exiting the poll, walking 3 miles an hour would take 3/4 hours to reach that distance. That time is critical to save the nation from plunging into total anarchy."
   
    "Knowing so many people are out there, watching," said Rather, "You know the soldiers- I mean voters - want to hear the news and you want to give it to them before anyone else knows at all."