http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14686-2000Nov14.html
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 14, 2000; Page C1
In yet another bizarre twist to an already surreal campaign, the head
of Fox News's Election Night decision desk - who recommended calling
Florida, and the election, for George W. Bush - turns out to be Bush's
first cousin.
Even as he was leading the Fox decision desk that night, John Ellis
was also on the phone with his cousins - "Jebbie," the governor of
Florida, and the presidential candidate himself - giving them updated
assessments of the vote count.
Ellis's projection was crucial because Fox News Channel put Florida in
the W. column at 2:16 a.m. - followed by NBC, CBS, CNN and ABC within
four minutes. That decision, which turned out to be wrong and was
retracted by the embarrassed networks less than two hours later,
created the impression that Bush had "won" the White House.
Which is why media circles were buzzing yesterday with the question of
why Fox had installed a Bush relative in such a sensitive post.
"Appearance of impropriety?" asks Fox Vice President John Moody, who
approved Ellis's recommendation to call Florida for Bush. "I don't
think there's anything improper about it as long as he doesn't behave
improperly, and I have no evidence he did. . . . John has always
conducted himself in an extremely professional manner."
But Moody admits that Ellis's Election Night conversations with the
cousins "would cause concern."
Ellis - whose mother, Nancy Ellis, is the sister of former president
George Bush - boasted to the New Yorker that "everyone followed us."
He also said the morning after the election that "Jebbie'll be calling
me like eight thousand times a day." Ellis did not respond to an
interview request yesterday.
Ellis's support for his cousin was hardly a secret. He wrote in The
Washington Post's Outlook section nine days ago that the Texas
governor is "smart, engaging, enormously energetic, possessed of
dynamic leadership skills, funny, wry [and] optimistic," as opposed to
"the morally berserk universe of the Clintons."
Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism,
said: "The notion that you'd have the cousin of one presidential
candidate . . . in a position to call a state is unthinkable. Fox's
call precipitated all the other networks' calls. That call - wrong,
unnecessary, misguided, foolish - has helped create a sense that this
election went to Bush, was pulled back and he is waiting to be
restored."
Critics say the Ellis connection will reinforce Fox's reputation as a
conservative network whose anchors include Tony Snow, a former Bush
White House staffer, and such commentators as Newt Gingrich. Fox
maintains it merely provides a balanced alternative to the liberal
networks. But, says Rosenstiel, "the marketing slogan 'We report, you
decide' is obliterated by the fact that one candidate's first cousin
is actually deciding, and then they report."
Marvin Kalb, Washington executive director of Harvard's Shorenstein
press center, calls Ellis "a fine writer and columnist, and he's
always sensitive about his relationship with his first cousin. His
mother is very, very close with former president Bush. Therefore I am
puzzled as to why he'd put himself in a position where he would seem
to be the one making the call for his cousin. It clearly conveys the
wrong impression."
As a Boston Globe columnist last year, Ellis wrote after some reader
complaints: "I am loyal to my cousin. . . . I put that loyalty ahead
of my loyalty to anyone else outside my immediate family. That being
the case, it is not possible for me to continue writing columns about
the 2000 presidential campaign."
Ellis worked for NBC News as a producer and researcher in the
political unit from 1978 through March 1989, soon after President Bush
took office. Fox says it hired Ellis this year for work during the
primaries and on Election Night. He also worked for Fox in 1998 when,
Moody says, he called George Bush's reelection in Texas (though that
was a landslide).
Ellis, who lives in Irvington, N.Y., was among those briefing Fox News
President Roger Ailes last Tuesday night, but he was not a total Bush
loyalist. At 7:52 p.m., Fox called Florida for Al Gore based on
Ellis's recommendation, though Fox was not the first to make that
projection. After Fox's report, according to the New Yorker, Jeb Bush
called and asked Ellis: "Are you sure?"
The Gore call, based heavily on exit polls from Voter News Service,
also turned out to be wrong and was retracted by the networks two
hours later.
At 2 a.m., Ellis called his cousins to say it was "statistically
impossible" for Gore to
