Why the mainstream news media got its midterms election coverage so wrong

[marmar]

Why the mainstream news media got its midterms election coverage so wrong
Today's news media simply refuses to recognize that the story of democracy in America is changing

By SOPHIA A. MCCLENNEN
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 26, 2022 7:30PM (EST)


(Salon) At 7:19 a.m. on November 10, when the Senate had already been called for the Democrats but votes were still being counted for the House, the Georgia Senate and several gubernatorial races, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) tweeted, "I am sure our enemies are quacking in their boots while we are still over here trying to count ballots."

Greene is notable for her typos and gaffes. But the quacking — rather than quaking — in their boots tweet drew quite the twitter mockdown, including this memorable rejoinder: "Quacking? You're a ducking moron."

Later, when MAGA election denier Kari Lake lost the Arizona gubernatorial race, she tweeted, "Arizonans know BS when they see it." Scores of Twitter replies decided to take that as her concession, especially March for Our Lives founder, David Hogg, who replied, "Explains why you're not the next Governor."

....(snip)....

So no, the story of the MAGA GOP loss is not really a story about losers, but rather about a party that has lost touch with reality. Instead, the real losers in the midterm election are the mainstream media, which not only blew its coverage of the election but also proved once and for all that it is more interested in getting attention than covering the news.

Let's start with the myriad headlines leading into Election Day which anticipated, wrongly, that the GOP would win, and did so with a steady stream of hyperbole and exaggeration. CNN referred to the "bottom dropping out" for Democrats, a fast-building "Republican wave" and Democrat's "nightmare scenario on election eve." And that was just CNN. In a Washington Post column on how the media messed up their coverage, Dana Milbank observed that along with CNN, The Post, the New York Times, Axios and Politico ran equally absurd headlines.

The disparity between the news coverage and what actually happened on Election Day even led the White House to claim that the press had "egg on their faces, yet again." .........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/11/26/why-the-mainstream-news-media-got-its-midterms-coverage-so/

[llashram]

1. the MSM wants

drama, tragedy, and hate-filled politics. It sells advertising. And when the bottom line is reached, MSM is owned and directed by RW people. I know neither name nor am I going to try to prove my statement except look at CNN Fox light now because a right winger is in charge now?

Don't forget the media credo. "If it bleeds it leads"

[yankee87]

6. Reich wing media

Almost all media is owned and operated by the extreme Reich wing. Democrats will never get an even break with them. For example, the media asks democrats, are you willing to work with the republicans. Meanwhile, they ask the republicans, who are you going to investigate, never about actually governing.

[llashram]

14. exactly

...

[treestar]

22. +1 which is why it is frustrating

to see "why aren't the Democrats out there saying x" and "Democrats are not good at messaging."

[Marcus IM]

11. The return on the investment in media isn't ad dollars. It's tax cuts and corporate loopholes.

Wall Street corps. investing millions in corporomedia yields billions in tax cuts when the GOPee is in power.

Crime pays. Lies pay. Dumbing-down pays. Spoon feeding addle-brained "survivor island", Honey Boo Boo, and Duck Dunn style "programming" is simply social conditioning. Repetitious messaging works. Said programming works for an authoritarian corporate agenda.

Why peeps don't get this is amazing.

[llashram]

12. yep

[Sympthsical]

2. The coverage was messy, but the polls were fine

In the two weeks leading up to the election, I didn't really understand the coverage I was seeing. We had a lot of different polls that were showing a very tight race on the national level. Yes, there were outliers, but there are always outliers. However, we ended up right about where data was showing - Republicans won the House by a few points, a close Senate was kept by Democrats.

My own prediction a week out (it's in my post history) was 218-225 Republican House with a 50-51 Democratic Senate.

Because that is where the polls were fairly consistently landing.

But a lot of the media commentary just wasn't reflecting this. I think the media needed the drama, the horse race, the eyeballs. And it's unfortunate, because the margins were so close. I was absolutely on tenterhooks going into that Tuesday. I had my feeling about how it would go, but it was so close I really couldn't say.

The drama was built in without the need for embellishment.

I think what the media was really cheering for was chaos. Chaos is good for them. They wanted a clusterfuck like 2020. They wanted claims of stolen elections and a total shitshow they could cover for weeks. They wanted Trump on TV with swagger and bragging and a promise that he would provide another two years of fuckery and ratings.

Well, that didn't happen. Outside of some grumbling around the periphery, this election has gone pretty well as far as being run of the mill and almost boring. Kari Lake got like two people to show up at a protest. Film at 11. Trump's announcement was a dud where even the Republican party was mostly, "Ugh. Over it." A lot of right-wing spaces I read that have been very, very pro-Trump the past six years are now openly discussing how it's time to move on for him.

Good for us. But pour one out for the media.

[llashram]

13. ++

[grantcart]

16. +1

[Hermit-The-Prog]

23. Rhetorical question: How many points did the self-fulfilling M$M prophesies affect?

[PSPS]

3. If there's no horse race, the stands will be empty.

[yardwork]

4. Excellent column. Thanks for posting it.

[Kaleva]

5. We had several here bemoaning the coming Red Wave.

[Diamond_Dog]

7. Kick

[JohnSJ]

8. I rarely pay attention to the MSM television media anymore

[peggysue2]

9. My Favorite Headline?

Democrats Drowning in Denial!

Why and how did they get it wrong? Because all the Very Important People kept pointing to 'precedent' at a time when precedent, tradition and the way things were, are, always have been are irrelevant.

They disregarded the impact of Dobbs, decided to take the advice of Republican pundits that "the little women would get over it" or another favorite--the initial reaction was emotional from emotional creatures who simply won't bother to vote.

How did that work out?

Perhaps the biggest mistake was ignoring the astonishing results in the earlier, special elections, and then compounding the error by discounting the equally astonishing early vote (which is now north of 50 million). At the time of the election, Dems had something like a 11 million vote advantage within approx. 42-45 million votes cast, the female vote was clearly in the lead, and the polls had been corrupted by junk numbers that many pollsters included in their averages. Post-election, I've read Republicans knew they were in trouble from their own internal polls. Hence, the 'flooding the zone' with sham polls in the last 2-3 three weeks makes a certain sense, anything to suppress the continuing vote with a doom and gloom message.

The data coming in was not wrong. It was the analyses, the presumptions and lazy thinking that were totally off the mark.

The heralded Red Wave never happened. Pro-democracy voters held the line. The battle continues.

[Deminpenn]

10. Processionay caterpillars

to the conventional wisdom. The media all had their heads stuck in the rear end of the one in front of them to form an unbroken circle when if just one had lifted his or her head, they'd have seen the evidence they were wrong in plain view.

Also agree that the "horse race" narrative was strong as well.

[ancianita]

15. Mainstream news media got everything -- 'issues,' 'polls,' i.e., HYPE -- the way it was intended to

I think we need to stop confusing ourselves about what news media are, and what their mission is, by continuing to 'explain' what we think they should be.

The "disparity" of coverage and on the ground reality shows that the public know what news media are, and that they don't use it as any guide for their voting decisions.

While it's good that Dana Milbank does a post mortem on what news media did -- even if it wasn't to remind the public of media's ongoing mission -- that's as far as media reviews go. They are a reminder that media don't change their hype.

We believe the news media hype that media are there to inform us. That's why the "egg on their faces, yet again," is still all in our mind.

[Lonestarblue]

19. Much as we might want media to be different, they are almost all in the bag for Republicans.

They may have been guilty of poor assumptions and analyses, but they were also running headlines to discourage Democratic voters and pump up Republican voters. As Trump starts actively campaigning, they’ll do exactly what they did before—refuse to hold him accountable for anything while breathlessly reporting his every tweet and continuing to ignore any of Biden’s accomplishments. One of the big reasons I read The Guardian is that I think they offer more straightforward news coverage than any US media. Their opinion writers are mostly progressive, so they’re not publishing drivel by writers like Hewitt at the Post.

[ancianita]

21. Pretty much in agreement here.

I appreciate the Guardian for the same reasons. Also, McClatchy, Media Matters, and Democracy Now.

[Warpy]

17. Wishful thinking pressure from their corporate bosses, confirmation bias affecting polls

For profit journalism that seeks ratings over news is not going to be able to shed that kind of bias easily.

[CloudWatcher]

18. "journalists"

The problem with this review is that it keeps referring to "journalists" in the MSM. They're not journalists, they're entertainers. They are there to drive up ratings, emotions and controversy. They are not there to educate or to provide unbiased coverage of the facts.

And it's a failure of our education system that we pay so much attention to them.

[ThoughtCriminal]

20. Ratings and Headlines are the media's #4 and #5 priorities

After:

#1 Pro-Oligarch propaganda
#2 Pro-Oligarch propaganda
#3 Pro-Oligarch propaganda

It's not that they don't care about ratings, it has to serve their masters first.