Media reporter Jim Rutenberg observed in the New York Times (1/0/08) that both the Times and CNN were initially hesitant to declare Clinton the winner of the New Hampshire Democratic primary as early results came in. As the Times headline put it, "Despite Early Results, News Outlets Let Caution Rule on Calling Winner."
But "caution" isn't the word that comes to mind for anyone who's been following the recent campaign coverage, as Rutenberg himself acknowledges.
Rather, he attributes the news outlets' hesitancy on the evening of January 8 to the fact that the results contradicted news outlets' "overwhelming predictions of an overwhelming victory for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, and an inevitable campaign shake-up for a wounded Mrs. Clinton."
It's commendable that news outlets are concerned about hastily predicting results when only preliminary results have come in, but why don't they exhibit a similar caution about picking winners before voting has even begun?
As FAIR pointed out in a Media Advisory (1/8/07), journalists started predicting the race's outcome before voters had even had a say in the matter!:
The Washington Post's David Broder wrote on January 4 that "New Hampshire is poised to close down the race for the Democratic presidential nomination." Newsweek's Jonathan Alter (1/3/08) likewise declared Obama to be the new inevitable after he won the Iowa caucus:
With his victory tonight, Barack Obama is now the strong favorite to be the Democratic nominee for president. The only one who can stop Obama from making history is Obama.... Unless he makes a terrible mistake in this weekend's WMUR debate in New Hampshire, Obama will be the strong favorite to win in the Granite State.... Should the Illinois senator win New Hampshire and South Carolina, it will be next to impossible to prevent him from becoming the nominee on February 5, Super Tuesday.
CNN commentator Gloria Borger, quoted by Rutenberg, chalked up the news outlets' erroneous predictions to the fact that "the polls had it wrong because voters change sometimes at the last minute." Yet journalists should in the first place approach the data they glean from polls with extreme caution.
As FAIR associate Norman Solomon has argued in his syndicated Media Beat column (10/17/02):
"We may believe that polls tell us what Americans are thinking. But polls also gauge the effectiveness of media spin -- and contribute to it. Opinion polls don't just measure; they also manipulate, helping to shape thoughts and tilting our perceptions of how most people think."
One way they do this is by leaving out possible options. As media critic Herbert Schiller once wrote, opinion polling as practiced in the U.S. is "a choice-restricting mechanism. Because ordinary polls reduce, and sometimes eliminate entirely, the ... true spectrum of possible options, the possibilities and preferences they express are better viewed as 'guided' choices."
Some of the recent polling in the 2008 elections provides an apt illustration of how the media's opinion polls narrow options. As FAIR pointed out in a recent Action Alert (12/21/07), USA Today polling cut Democratic candidate John Edwards out of questions about electability -- despite the fact that "when other polls have included Edwards in questions about electability, Edwards generally does better than [Clinton and Obama], sometimes by wide margins."
Suppose - just suppose - that the pre-election polls WERE properly conducted, and DID yield accurate results. Suppose further that they WERE reasonably interpreted by members of the media and the public. Finally, suppose that the actual official vote count was manipulated (via Diebold intervention) to augment Ms Clinton's totals and/or decrement Mr. Obama's.
In that hypothetical, we would see:
a) EXIT POLLS WHICH VINDICATED THE PRE-ELECTION POLLS, AND CONTRADICTED THE OFFICIAL RESULTS,
b) initial shock, and hesitation before accepting the official results,
c) an active campaign by those manipulating these (and potentially future) votes to cast aspersions on the pre-election and exit polls,
d) the scapegoating of pollsters by pundits like yourself, who can't bring themselves to question process integrity,
e) everyone else shoe-horning these results into an argument supporting their own particular world view,
f) outrage from at least a few honest, forthright politicians and dedicated journalists, and
g) a strong skew for Ms Clinton's Diebold-counted votes relative to her hand-counted results - a skew which persisted even when the counties were split by size and analyzed separately.
In short, if the hypothetical were true, we'd have all the outcomes we observe today.
Including your well-meaning but misguided post.
I was watching her, too. Amazing that I was. I never watch her. But I got to see that one clear moment.
We, the people, have BARELY begun to speak and already they're trying to force things into a two horse race and largely ignore the anti-big-business (anti-fascist) voices like those of Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich and even John Edwards.
Just Don't Listen To Them. Become informed and do what YOU think is right.
Zeitgeist:
http://www.zeitgeistsociety.org/movie/