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Wednesday, January 9, 2008
New Hampshire: Record breaking confusion, but no penalties
Wow.
No matter how attuned one might be to the chronic inability of the American media to understand American politics, you’ve got to be stunned by the sheer massiveness of the failure in New Hampshire.
The Internet sites of the most respected mainstream outlets were so full Monday and Tuesday of certainty that Hillary would lose that New Hampshire wasn’t even the story anymore. The story was what she would do in the wake of her big defeat: fold or, somehow, carry on.
In defense of the media misinformers, one must acknowledge that the polls were stunning in their movement toward Obama. But pros should have known that any bubble that could expand that fast could deflate that fast. Opinions often change as an election approaches (as happened in Iowa), and this one approached with special speed, after Iowa.
And, true, Obama was drawing far larger crowds. But so, probably, would Britney Spears.
In fact, though, the journalists weren’t content to report the concrete facts about polls and crowds. They had to report that Obama’s campaign was going better and being run better. The Washington’s Post’s Dana Milbank had a video column (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2008/01/07/VI2008010700846.html) that was the most brutal review I think I’ve seen in the mainstream media of the performance of a major candidate.
A New York Times guy had a similar take on a Bill Clinton appearance. Somebody else was appalled that the Clinton people were so blind that one of them asked “Where’s the bounce?” about alleged boost that Obama got out of Iowa. The list goes on.
There’s nothing wrong with reporting any of this. But there’s something wrong with being wrong — especially when your job isn’t predicting, but reporting.
Most striking is this fact: The same people who simply did not get what was happening in New Hampshire will be the ones reporting, analyzing and predicting in Michigan, South Carolina and beyond. They won’t be asked to resign, either in the long term or the short. They won’t get fired or challenged in the next election. They won’t get reassigned. They’ll pay no price whatsoever for not having the expertise it is their job to have. Everybody will just have a good laugh about how confounding the American voter can be, and they will move on to their next botches, safe in their numbers.
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