The Washington DC-based American Antitrust Institute, an independent action group, has called for the breakup of Voter News Service, the body set up by the major networks, news channels and the Associated Press to conduct election-night exit polling. In a letter to the Justice Department quoted in today's (Tuesday) Wall Street Journal, the AAI charged that the lack of competition between the news organizations resulted in each of them making the same mistakes, particularly in their miscalls of the Florida vote. "All of the 'competing' major networks are actually colluding with one another, and they call their collusion the Voter News Service," the AAI said in its letter. Meanwhile, former CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite has urged the television networks to hold off calling elections until all of the states have voted. "I don't understand the need for this speed, although I was certainly one of the progenitors of the whole idea of the exit polling," Cronkite told the Charleston, WV Gazette-Mail.

Source: Studio Briefing