I’m not one to hammer on “THE MEDIA,” whatever that may be, but I do think there are things that journalists can do to improve their coverage of elections.:
Maybe the real lesson of tonight’s election for my colleagues and I is that we should stop covering politics like sports and instead report first and foremost on who the candidates are and what they want to do.
— Jerry Zremski (@JerryZremski) November 9, 2022
I agree with Jerry here. This is so important. Journalists have got to get away from “who-is-winning-and-losing-horse-race” coverage and get down with the hard work of reporting on who these candidates are and what they stand for. And, yes, we will have to deal with being charged with “being biased” when we write about issues.
Journalists have to just get over their fear of being called “biased.” Journalists – critics / politicians / voters are never going to love you. They will always be pushing that anything that does not match their desires is biased.
Our elite political reporters were partial to a Republican narrative because it insulated them from accusations of being liberal, which is their worst nightmare.
— Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) (@froomkin) November 9, 2022
(There is also concern among reporters that audiences, based on social media clicks, really prefer horse race coverage over complex issue oriented reporting — tl:dr.)
One of the big problems with horse race journalism is that it is getting harder and harder to know who is ahead, especially in close races.
It seems like every election cycle we go through, there continues to be more and more concern about the accuracy of the polls. There are at least a couple of reasons for this.
- We are having closer and closer elections. The polls can be accurate within their margin of error and still not give us very useful specific details.
- It’s getting harder and harder to reach an accurate sample of the population as a whole.
Before the next election, you might want to find a better way to poll anyone under the age of 30 since they would rather pick up a pinless grenade than a call from an unknown number.
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) November 9, 2022
There is also evidence that there is actually nothing wrong with the polls this election cycle. Perhaps there is just too much bad reporting based on polls:
Smart post from one of my commentary students:
Complementary: Need coverage on who constituencies are across the country, what their wants & needs are, and how they inform the kinds of leaders & solutions voters are searching for. Disinterest from the top toward states viewed as out of reach is harmful to democracy #JMC406
— Mitchell Lierman (@LiermanMitchell) November 9, 2022
You may or may not know that I’m located in central Nebraska, a state viewed as reliably Republican. Except we split our electoral votes by district and gave one vote to Biden in 2020. Journalists have been surprised by how states like Kansas have been voting. It might be worthwhile to pay more attention to what “flyover” states are thinking. Other than talking old folks in diners…
Another thing that journalists have got to do is stop treating Hispanic voters as a uniform block. Folks whose families came from Cuba are different from those who came from Central America are different from those who came from South America. Those who are wealthy business people are different from those who work for hourly wages. There are lots of differences within this population. Don’t imagine one ethic group is uniform in their political values.