[NYTr] FAIR: Press Humbled in New Hampshire?

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

FAIR - Jan 11, 2008
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3242

Media Advisory

Humbled in New Hampshire?

Press Needs to Refocus Campaign Coverage

Leading up to the New Hampshire primary, the storyline on the
Democratic side was the disastrous state of the Clinton campaign. Her
loss was a given; it seemed the only considerations were the margin of
defeat and whether or not she would even continue running at all. The
day of the primary, the Washington Post reported (1/8/08) that a second
loss to Obama "would leave the New York senator's candidacy gasping for
breath," and declared that Clinton's vow to stay in the race

"may be more wish than reality. By Wednesday, it may be too late. By
then, Obama's campaign may have inflicted enough damage on the
woman-who-was-once-inevitable that no amount of readjusting,
recalibrating and rearranging will give her the wherewithal to overcome
two big losses in the first contests of the 2008 nomination battle."

Clinton, of course, won the primary--surprising the pundits and
contradicting the polls that journalists unwisely use to set the tone
of so much of their coverage. In the aftermath, the media were left
asking what went "wrong" with the numbers. As the front page of USA
Today declared (1/10/08), "For pollsters, N.H. 'unprecedented.'" But
this isn't so; the actual USA Today story included a state pollster who
noted that pre-election polls in 2000 vastly underestimated John
McCain's victory over George W. Bush. Right before the primary, the New
York Times reported (1/30/00) that "a series of polls showed the two
Republican front-runners in a dead heat." Given that McCain won by 19
points, journalists and pollsters puzzling over Clinton's showing are
ignoring very recent history.

As the media mea culpas start to pile up, it's worth considering the
unspoken implication--that if the vote had gone the way the polls were
predicting, then the press would have been doing a fine job of covering
an election. But journalists should not be gamblers, betting that they
will be vindicated by voters' choices that are inherently
unpredictable. Reporters should strive for coverage that holds up no
matter what the results are.

Expectations and reality

Though they often prefer to think of themselves as mere observers of an
election, the media clearly set the tone for much of the campaign,
laying out expectations for various candidates and making editorial
decisions about who the most "viable" contenders will be--usually long
before most actual voters have been given the chance to weigh in.

But beating the expectations doesn't necessarily guarantee good
coverage. Democratic contender John Edwards defied press predictions by
finishing second in Iowa, ahead of supposed front-runner Hillary
Clinton. But much of the media conversation after the votes were
tallied focused on the disappointing Edwards showing. By contrast,
Republican John McCain had a great night in Iowa, according to many in
the press-- despite the fact that he finished fourth, behind Fred
Thompson. The obvious difference is not how well the candidates did but
how well they are liked by the press corps.

Some in the media point out that the Republican race in New Hampshire
went as predicted, so it wasn't all bad news for the press. But the
campaign coverage still included its share of bizarrely confident
predictions. NBC's Tim Russert (1/4/08) declared that "only McCain or
Romney can come out of New Hampshire to fight for another day in South
Carolina, only one. One stays behind. It is make or break for McCain or
Romney in New Hampshire." Given that both candidates are, by all
appearances, continuing to campaign, will Russert explain where his
prediction came from? Or as the Washington Post's David Broder wrote
before the New Hampshire vote (1/4/08), "A second Romney loss would
effectively end the former Massachusetts governor's candidacy."

Horse race

There's a long trend of media hostility towards so-called "second-tier"
candidates (Extra!, 9/10/03). As a recent Wall Street Journal news
story put it (1/10/08), "In both parties, second-tier candidates
continue to press on and siphon off votes." But Broder and Russert were
not just saying that non-frontrunners have a duty to get out of the
way--they were asserting that a loss in New Hampshire would mean that
Romney would no longer be a front-runner. This illustrates an important
point about mainstream election coverage: Not only do journalists and
pundits devote far too much attention to covering the horse race aspect
of campaigns, but when they cover the horse race they generally do a
poor job of it.

Primary elections and caucuses determine how a state party's delegates
are assigned; if a candidate wins enough delegates, they will almost
certainly be their party's nominee. So a reasonably helpful media would
focus on this delegate count. But the mathematics of this process are
obscured by the media's obsession with "wins" and "losses" in highly
visible contests.

Consider Barack Obama's apparently monumental victory in the Iowa
caucuses. The distribution of delegates, though, was hardly so
dramatic: Obama won 16, Clinton 15 and Edwards 14. In a race to secure
a little over 2,000 delegates, the results are of little consequence.
In New Hampshire, Clinton's dramatic comeback netted her nine
delegates--the same number awarded to Obama. In the total delegate
count tallied on CNN's website--which counts a large number of party
insiders awarded as "superdelegates"--Clinton has more than double the
number of delegates as Obama, and Edwards is about 25 delegates behind
Obama.

On the Republican side, McCain's victory in New Hampshire gained him
seven delegates; to put that in context, Romney's second-place finish
in Iowa was worth 12 delegates. And Romney's win in the Wyoming
primary--which received almost no media coverage at all--secured him
eight delegates. His total delegate count still puts him ahead of all
or most his competitors (depending on whether you believe CNN or ABC),
though the media coverage would lead you to conclude otherwise.

Given that the process of nominating a presidential candidate is a
matter of winning delegates, why does the press assign so much
significance to the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries? The
implicit assumption is that these small states have a big role in
determining the eventual party nominees, but they actually have a quite
mixed record in projecting overall winners in competitive races. (Gary
Hart, Paul Tsongas and Pat Buchanan were all New Hampshire winners.)
Neither does losing early primaries necessarily doom a candidacy--in
1992, Bill Clinton lost the first five contests. The media's decision
to place such importance on the small number of delegates in the first
two states has little to do with any actual reasonable political
determination.

What do we cover now?

Former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw offered some helpful commentary during the
coverage of the New Hampshire primaries, suggesting to MSNBC anchor
Chris Matthews that reporters put less emphasis on trying to predict
outcomes and spend more time covering actual policy:

    BROKAW: You know what I think we're going to have to do?

    MATTHEWS: Yes sir?

    BROKAW: Wait for the voters to make their judgment.

    MATTHEWS: Well, what do we do then in the days before the ballot?
We must stay home, I guess.

    BROKAW: No, no we don't stay home. There are reasons to analyze
what they're saying. We know from how the people voted today, what
moved them to vote. You can take a look at that. There are a lot of
issues that have not been fully explored during all this.

Matthews' response is illuminating. Does a political junkie who hosts
two national television programs really not have any idea about how to
cover politics other than talking about strategy, fundraising and
polls? Do campaign journalists really have so little interest in the
actual policy positions of the candidates?

As it stands now, the races for the major party nominations are
remarkably close. The most valuable service journalists could provide
now would be to illustrate the differences between the candidates on
the major issues of importance to voters. The press corps seems
chastened by their misreading of the New Hampshire electorate, and many
are vowing to be more cautious in their assumptions. Will they follow
through on their own advice? And will voters ever get campaign
reporting that helps them make informed choices about the direction of
their democracy? 

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