US media wonder if they goofed again

But four years after their 2000 debacle, US media were left wondering on Wednesday if they had goofed one more time in trying to predict the results of a nail-biting presidential election.

Both Fox and NBC reported that Republican President George W. Bush would win the state of Ohio, with its 20 electoral votes bringing the incumbent to the doorstep of re-election victory over Democratic challenger John Kerry.

The Kerry campaign quickly fired back that all votes would have to be counted and refused to concede, raising the spectre of another legal battle -- and more potential embarrassment for the US broadcast giants.

The 2000 election made history for many reasons, not least because the US networks made an early projection that Al Gore would win Florida, a state he ultimately lost in a bitter fight that went to the Supreme Court.

At the time, NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw admitted: "I not only have egg on my face, I have an entire omelette all over my suit."

Brokaw was back in the spotlight as the 2004 election dragged into the wee hours on Wednesday, after his network said Bush was expected to carry Ohio, a hotly contested battleground state.

However on rival CNN -- which along with ABC and CBS did not call a winner in Ohio -- commentators were in no mood to gloat as they revealed Republicans had been angered over media election coverage earlier in the day.

In what was supposed to be a critical reform, the major TV networks scrapped the vote data service used in 2000 to make the errant call for Gore and instituted a cautious, new system intended to prevent any mistakes.

But despite their best intentions, exit poll data found its way onto the Internet well before any of the polls had closed on Tuesday -- and it showed Kerry heading toward a comfortable victory.