Will the media keep a lid until after the CA polls closed

[question everything]

or will it report results of the East Coast as soon as they can "predict" the winner?

I thought that for a while they did try to be responsible, in the 1992 elections, I think, but not in 2000 with Florida moving between blue and red.

[BlueJazz]

1. They'll most likely be a little more careful after the "Florida Thing"

I suspect the winner will only be called (early) if the gap is fairly large.

[question everything]

2. Seems like they already called WV for Huckabee (nt)

[RB TexLa]

3. The votes in different states don't have any effect on one another

no reason to wait for other states to close. In Florida the situation is people in Florida in the central time zone were still voting when the eastern time zone of the state had closed. And in 2000 was calling it too early in their minds, CNN got it right but a vote that comes down to 1000 vote or less difference can't be called correctly that early.