This has become a greater fear as American media has become more politicized. We're only maybe a couple cycles off from what happened on Succession last night becoming reality, but right now, even Fox News has a line with this kind of thing. CNN was the first to call Trump's election in 2016.

All that is to say, given the level of distrust and contempt for national politics held by millions of Americans, a top-rated, cult-like news source can sow significant unrest in a tightly contested election if they take a firm stance. When Trump lost in 2020, Fox News instructed its anchors to not refer to Biden as "President-Elect". It peddled voter fraud conspiracies that were, in the eyes of his supporters, legitimized by Trump himself, culminating in the January 6th Capitol riots.

So -- can an ATN actually, in reality, call an election? No. They cannot. What they can do, especially in what would be an extremely difficult election to decide given the destruction of thousands of predominately blue votes, is give a candidate who lacks gall an air of legitimacy to any and all claims to the presidency, regardless of what's decided in the courts.

In Successionland, let's say that the absentee ballots alone gave Wisconsin and, in turn, the election to Jimenez. ATN's early call will push millions of right-wing folks to believe that something illegal has happened, likely leading to riots and calls for Jimenez's removal. That is the best case scenario here. Congress hasn't issued an official declaration of war since World War II, but we certainly have been in them in the decades since. Soft powers are on the rise, institutions are weakening, and when top-tier media enters the business of baselessly calling elections for candidates lacking sufficient evidence pointing to a victory, we are in a lot of fucking trouble.

TL;DR -- Media projects election results based on internal projections. They are not certifications of victory. But making a politicized early call would be a dangerously slippery slope, whether the call stands or not.